How many releases is too many?

[craig]

This issue has come up before - from the cigar boom days. The annual IPCPR trade show supposedly has 170 new releases so far this year, and that count doesn't appear to include the inevitable new house brands.

The 170 are listed here: http://thecigarfeed.com/?p=7907

I thought (and think) Habanos has too many new releases (and too many gimmicks), but the US market seems to be fixating on new stuff, and Pete Johnson alone has the gimmick market saturated, IMHO.

Mind you, the most interesting thing to me is Sam Leccia has been banned from the show.

Edit: ICPCR, IPCPR, RTDA, whatever. :-)

[Eville]

I don't see any problems with a bunch of new releases. To me it just shows that the cigar industry is staying healthy and growing. As long as they stick to their established blends, the only problem is that it means I have a bunch of new stuff to try. The good thing about being a member of a fine cigar community such as this is that we can work together to sort out the gimmicky crap from the worthwhile new stuff.

[ashauler]

There are only so many strains of tobacco, and so many ways to ferment them, and so many ways to combine and blend them and, wait......that's a shit load of "different" .

[craig]

... which is often used to get a brand tasting the same year after year. :-)

[prophetic_joe]

This issue has come up before - from the cigar boom days. The annual IPCPR trade show supposedly has 170 new releases so far this year, and that count doesn't appear to include the inevitable new house brands.

The 170 are listed here: http://thecigarfeed.com/?p=7907

I thought (and think) Habanos has too many new releases (and too many gimmicks), but the US market seems to be fixating on new stuff, and Pete Johnson alone has the gimmick market saturated, IMHO.

Mind you, the most interesting thing to me is Sam Leccia has been banned from the show.

Edit: ICPCR, IPCPR, RTDA, whatever. :-)

I would love to hear more about this one.

[craig]

I would assume that the non-compete agreement and lawsuit stuff to date convinced the judge to sign the order.

ETA: 'updated' source, has statements from Sam and Jose Oliva: http://thecigarfeed.com/?p=7946

[mrtr33]

That's incredible. A quick glance over this new class reveals a few annual releases, such as Camacho's Liberty, Davidoff's LE annual release, and Tatuaje's Monster Series. A few are limited releases with limited accessibility, such as only being available when purchased with a commemorative humidor. Even still, there are a lot of uniquely new cigars coming out at this year's event.

Another thing I noticed were the manufacturers that were putting these out: I'm wondering if this is a testament to how they're doing in cigar smoking circles. You'd expect Gurkha and Tatuaje to each put out 6 new blends this year, but E.P. Carrillo has several new releases, as does La Aurora. I wouldn't have thought we'd see that many from them. Oddly enough, CAO only has one.