QuoteAlphairon - 4/1/2010 8:31 PM
Nice! What's with the Dirty Rat in the middle?
Here is little background on Steve Saka and the LP:
"Basically, the Liga Privada cigars came about as a personal blend for Drew Estate's president Steve Saka's own smoking pleasure. This got me thinking, "why exactly, would such a great cigar that Steve holds so dearly to him be let out into the market". So I decided to ask Steve Saka personally and here is his response:
The decision to release the LP No. 9 was something I was "forced" into... When it was originally blended we had very little leaf on hand to make it, but it didn't matter as it was a cigar we were just crafting for me to smoke and we had plenty of leaf to make me a couple of thousand of special cigars.
Because it was so good, there was a lot of internal pressure from our sales guys to make it for retail sale, which I caved to with the caveat that we could only open 20 or so accounts and that we would have to slowly grow the brand, basically ten stores at time while we bought and fermented the needed leaf to make more as I was unwilling to let the consistency or quality slip in anyway. Liga Privada was and remains very personal to me.
So as we have increased our leaf stock, we have slowly increased our account base on the brand... to date we have grown the account base to some 200 or so stores. We are still limited by the very specific and tip-top quality leaf needed, but each year we buy more, which allows us to ferment and age more, and in turn make more cigars.
Same is true of T52, except we intended from nearly day one to add the blend/brand to the sales portfolio."
The Dirty Rat is a pre-production blend that wasn't going to be made for the general market. Steve Saka sent out a number of them to various people, and the response was overwhelming. From what I've heard, they now have some aging for a fall 2010 release. What makes the Dirty Rat exceptional is the blend of SEVEN types of tobacco in a corona sized cigar. Here are some stats:
Size: Corona 5×44
Wrapper: Stalk-Cut Sungrown Connecticut Valley Habano
Binder: Brazilian Mata Fina
Filler: 5 different Honduran and Nicaraguan tobaccos
