E.P. Carrillo Edición Inaugural

Some cigars sharpen your focus with a smoke that offers you the time and inclination to ponder and strategize. Others take you away, lightening your load with aromas and flavors that have been the bedrock of Latin American camaraderie for centuries. But a rare breed of cigar provides the best of both worlds, insight and escape, vigor and visions—these are the rewards which cascaded through my being when I lit up a Carillo Edición Inaugural. Ernesto Perez-Carillo is no novice when it comes to creating stogies that make grown men rave and reminisce like school girls. The progeny of a famed Cuban tobacco family, Ernesto’s father founded the El Credito Cigar Company in 1969. By 1999 the company had become a leviathan largely on the shoulders of Ernesto’s signature creation, La Gloria Cubana cigar, and the family sold the outfit for an reported $40 million. These days Ernesto runs the EPC Cigar Co. from Miami and the Dominican Republic with his son and daughter and the medium-bodied Edición Inaugural, EPC’s first cigar, was released in December. Rarely has there been such anticipation in the smoking world for the release of a new cigar. But the pure satisfaction I experienced when smoking the Edición Inaugural and the glances of envy and admiration that I received, were proof that this cigar was well worth the wait.