Oh, what could have been. In 2010, Tatuaje released the first in what was supposed to be annual series of cigars incorporating tobacco that was all grown on one farm. Named La Vérité—which translates to the truth—the project was inspired by brand owner Pete Johnson’s love of wine. The basic premise of the series was simple: produce two different cigars— La Vérité, a 7 x 47 churchill, and L’Espirit de Vérité, a 5 x 50 robusto— with all of the tobacco sourced from the García family’s La Estrella farm in Estelí, Nicaragua. Although they were released in 2010, the first release of La Vérité was actually composed of tobacco from 2008, while the 2011 release was composed of tobacco from the 2009 crop. In addition, each release was aged in master cabinets for more than a year before being packaged in a variety of formats and sent to retailers. After the 2009 release, the assumption was that La Vérité would continue to be released, but year after year passed, and there was very little news on any new blends. At an event in 2011, Johnson handed me a robusto and told me that it was a prototype of a L’Espirit de Vérité 2010, something I had never seen before. I ...
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