30
TOBACCO BUSINESS
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013
about Victor—he’s from the old school
whereby he’s involved in the production
from beginning to end. We created this
and it is monitored all along the way.”
The Tortuga 215 Reserva cigar is the
latest in the Tortuga line that Assante
refers to—and it is actually being sold
now as a boxed set with the Ora Vivo
Armand Assante cigar (both are also sold
separately, of course).
Both brands will sell between $8
and $10 a stick and be available in four
sizes.They are both manufactured in the
company’s factory in Honduras, which
is geared toward limited production, not
to be confused with limited edition, as
Vitale explains.
“Limited production is when it’s ready,
it’s
ready
—all the components have to
make sense in order for it to be ready—
as opposed to limited edition where you
run out of the raw materials to make it:
you found the black pearl of the sea and
can’t get it anymore,” he says. “I’ve made
limited edition before and have it now,
but the Tortuga is a reserva and the Ora
Vivo is limited production, which are
similar.”
Operation Cigars for
Warriors and Retailers
with Heart
Aligned and sharing IPCPR booth
space with Drew Estate, Operation
Cigars for Warriors is a non-profit
organization with a mission to send cigars
to deployed troops in combat zones.The
organization has created a worldwide
network of stores designated as cigar
and cash donation drop-off locations—
from small individual donations to large
corporate gifts. Recently, Operation
Cigars for Warriors developed a program
called the Power of One, whereby “we
ask people to send us one dollar or one
cigar on a monthly basis, and that grows
into 100 and then into 1000, and so on,”
explains TimMorris, forums director.
In fact, retailers with just one store “are
our bread and butter—the individual
mom-and-pops are the core of this
