It’s been barely a week since I reviewed a TAA exclusive, so rather than attempting to rewrite something I’ve described dozens of times before, here’s my latest description of the TAA and its exclusive cigars. Over the last handful of years, the Tobacconists’ Association of America (TAA) has become a more common name to many cigar consumers after long being a retail group known almost only to those employed in the cigar industry, The TAA is a group of about 80 retailers from all across the U.S. who come together once per year—usually in the Dominican Republic or Mexico—to meet about issues facing the cigar industry, socialize and participate in a trade show with select manufacturers. In recent years, many of those manufacturers have begun to not only participate in the trade show, but also make exclusive cigars for the members of the organization. When it comes to manufacturers who produce exclusive cigars for TAA, Padrón is perhaps the most unique. For many years, before most other manufacturers began to create new TAA exclusives, Padrón offered TAA retailers a 1964 measuring 5 x 54, oddly called Toro, with the boxes containing the name of the store they were sent to. ...
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