Here is the skinny:
Regretfully all Liga Privada No. 9 & T52 will always be difficult to find for the foreseeable future. It is a very tough thing to make any cigar consistent when it utilizes 7 different tobaccos from 7 different vegueros.
We have been buying and curing more of all the required tobaccos over the last four years, but demand keeps outpacing us.
And even with cash in hand there is rarely enough "LP Quality" wrapper tobacco to buy.
No. 9s primarily stumbling block is the CT Broadleaf No. 1 Dark capa. 3 years ago the crop was ravaged by hail damage, 2 years ago the crop was great as far as CT Broadleaf goes, but not for No. 1 Darks - almost the entire crop was Mediums & #1/#2 LS - great tobacco, just not what we needed for LP No. 9. This most recent crop is much better for our purposes, but still not enough...
T52s utilize a hybrid Type 52 Seed Habana Sun Grown Stalk Cut leaf that is cultivated exclusively for us. As we have become more familiar with this leaf we have begun to work very closely with our farmers to make it richer in flavor... well the last two crops have been nothing short of glorious, they are so greasy and oily that I get a boner just sorting through the leaf... problem however is it requires longer curing and fermenting times.
Could we make and sell more LPs faster? Only by changing the blends or the fermentation/aging times and while 95%+ of the people would never even notice, we would and we would know they are not as good as they should be, so we wait, which means our customers wait...
This has become a real problem for our sales team as they currently are getting beaten up ever single day by retailers demanding more product.
There is one ray of hope though... we have a new Liga Blend called Undercrown being released this year.
It actually came as a result of the LP shortage in our own factory by the workers. About 18 months ago we told the workers they had to stop smoking all the Liga because they were smoking so many of them they were leaving us so few to sell! So we limited the LP torcedors to 1 a day allowing only the Supervisors and Quality Control to continue their wanton LP smoking... Anyways, in response to this internal rationing the LP buncheros created their own "replacement" blend and were careful to make it utilizing entirely different tobaccos so as to not impact the current LP materials.
Long story short, JD, Nicholas and I were very impressed with this rich medium-full blend that exhibits just a perfect taste of spice and pepper. There is a real creamy undernote that makes it perfect to relax with...
Anyhow, we should be sharing it at the tradeshow...
BR,
Steve
Prez, Drew Estate
