Can’t wait for my local shop (Capital City Cigars) to carry them! Here’s a press release from Cigar Aficionado Online.
“PreSan Industries, known for the full-bodied Illusione brand, is toning down the strength with a new cigar line called Cruzado.
“Conceptually it’s a different cigar than Illusione,” said brand owner Dion Giolito, owner of the Fumare cigar shop in Reno, Nevada. “It is not as strong. Full flavored, but medium bodied.”
Giolito said the Cruzado brand was originally slated to be produced by the maker of Joya de Nicaragua in the Tabacos Puros de Nicaragua S.A. factory in Estelí, but, according to Giolito, he was told in March that a recent surge in production at the factory meant that the capacity to make his cigar was no longer available. As a result, Giolito moved the project to Raices Cubanas, the Honduran factory where his Illusione brand is made.
Unlike Illusione cigars, which have dark wrappers, the Cruzado’s lighter shade will fall between what Giolito calls a café claro and café rosado type of wrapper. The Cruzado blend comprises Criollo wrapper from Nicaragua, Nicaraguan binder, and filler from both Nicaragua and Honduras. When developing the blend, Giolito calibrated Cruzado’s flavor profile and strength by omitting the powerful ligero tobacco found in his Illusione brand and using the milder viso tobacco instead.”
Hmmm. Let’s review…..
Pete Johnson, a young hip up and comer in the cigar industry makes a full bodied, Dark Wrapped Nicaraguan cigar, the Tatuaje, and then follows that with a lighter medium Bodied Cabaiguan. He also releases a line of Coffees designed to be paired with his cigars.
Enter Dion Giolito…
He is also a young, hip up and comer. he makes a full bodied Nicaraguan Cigar, the Illusione. He then follows that up with a lighter, medium bodied cigar, the Cruzado and he also has a line of coffees meant to be paired with his cigars.
Looks like Pete created the formula for success and now we are seeing people put that formula to work….
I’m just being cynical. I actually really like the Illusiones and am becoming almost as big a fan of Dion as I am of Pete……
Nice observation Matt. You are absolutely right. As you said, even if he is copying Pete’s schtick, at least he’s doing it justice.
Don’t compare Illusione to Tatuaje. Tats are dry one dimensional Pepin blends. Illusione makes complex interesting cigars
Where did I do that in this post? I do agree that Illusiones are much more complex than Tats, though.
The original comment on the review compares Giolito with Johnson. I realize that the cigars themselves aren’t being compared, but I hope that others who might read here wouldn’t think these are similar cigars because of that comment.
No disrespect to Pete Johnson or Don Pepin.
Gotcha. Many have a tendency to lump Dion in with Pete (they are friends after all), but yeah, Dion’s stuff is waaay different than Pete/DPG.