Tobacco Business

[ 42 ] TOBACCO BUSINESS [ JULY / AUGUST | 21 ] Dominican Cigar of the Year: E.P. Carrillo Pledge Ernesto Perez-Carrillo crafted Pledge as a follow-up to E.P. Carrillo’s La Historia and Encore. The blend began as a sample Perez-Carrillo had developed for a limited release but never used and had stored away in his humidor for two years before he smoked it. When his son, Ernie, smoked this particular sample, he proclaimed, “This is what I want, Dad. This is a cigar!” With everyone on the E.P. Carrillo team in agreement on the blend, Perez-Carrillo moved forward with bringing Pledge to the market as the third installment in his company’s Perez-Carrillo trilogy of cigars. His daughter, Lissette, went to work on the marketing and branding of the cigar and tapped Miami-based designer Dennis Hernandez to help visually bring the cigar to life. “It was, it was something to basically try the wrapper,” Perez- Carrillo says of the Pledge’s blend. “I [also] wanted to use different binders. This is when I decided to use the Ecuadorian binder because it gave me that creaminess, and it gave me the strength that would make it different from the other two cigars—La Historia and the Encore. It was decided that Pledge would be made available as both a Robusto and Toro, another departure from other E.P. Carrillo cigar lines. Originally, the plan was to release Pledge in March of 2020, but then the pandemic hit, forcing Perez-Carrillo to shut down his Dominican-based factory for two months. Before the closure, a few thousand sticks of Pledge had been made, but more would need to be rolled before the cigar had a proper release. It wasn’t until September when E.P. Carrillo finally released Pledge, supported by a completely different approach to marketing than the company had taken with previous product launches. “Even before the ratings, we were starting to see the growth in that particular line. It was really impressive. I have to give a lot of credit to Lissette and the gentleman that used to be with us, Selim [Hanono], who really did an outstanding job of promoting this cigar. I have to say this was really the first time that we promoted a cigar so heavily and in such an organized and so professional way. Before when we released cigars, we really didn’t make that big of a deal of it, but this one’s whole marketing aspect and promotions were just above anything we had done to date. It was a great marketing strategy, and the cigar community responded, which is a good thing. Everybody knew in the back of their minds that we had a winner here. We didn’t think we’d get No. 1, but we knew we had a cigar that was going to be really special,“ Perez-Carrillo explains. Pledge has quickly become one of E.P. Carrillo’s most sought after and highly rated cigars. This year, Pledge was voted as the Dominican Cigar of the Year in the Tobacco Business Awards, an award that Perez-Carrillo notes is special to him due to how it was decided on. “It’s a great honor,” Perez-Carrillo says of Pledge winning a Tobacco Business Award this year. “Every award has a special place in our heart and our company, but when you get something like this where it’s voted on by the industry and by the consumers, it just tells you that all these years of hard work and what we’ve been doing for all these years going back to 1904, when my grandfather used to make penny cigars in the streets of Cuba ... it’s very special.” Even before the ratings, we were starting to see the growth in that particular line. It was really impressive. — Ernesto Perez-Carrillo Co-founder and master blender, Perdomo TOP CIGARS 24 THE TOBACCO BUSINESS AWARDS | 2021