Publish Time: 2025-06-13 Origin: Site
New Cigar Products at InterTabac 2024
BY THOMAS SCHMID December 3, 2024 1:52 PM
Dr. Luis Antonio Sorinas Gonzalez, the initiator of Cambodia’s first longfiller cigars, Grandlead and Padrino. Photo credit: Power Cigar Tobacco Co. Ltd.
https://www.tobaccoasia.com/features/new-cigar-products-at-intertabac-2024/
Cambodian torcedores at work. Photo credit: Power Cigar Tobacco Co. Ltd.
Power Cigar Tobacco’s marketing manager, Adrian Lee. Photo credit: Thomas Schmid
Tobacco Asia looks at new cigar products that made their debut at InterTabac 2024.
One of the most exciting aspects for visitors to large international exhibitions is that the halls are brimming with new products in every imaginable category, making their global debuts there. InterTabac is no different, with almost every other booth showcasing something that hasn’t been seen before anywhere. For this article, Tobacco Asia scouted out some remarkable new premium cigar offerings that should delight even the most discerning aficionado.
Power Cigar Tobacco
(Cambodia)
Brands: Padrino and Grandlead
Cambodia is home to many things unique in the world, among them the magnificent ancient temple complex of Angkor, the majestic Tonle Sap (Southeast Asia’s largest freshwater lake), and tropical dream beaches, but sadly also one of the worst social transformation experiments in human history under the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime. But, premium-class cigars?
Enter Power Tobacco Co. Ltd., which in 2014 set up a huge 10-hectare tobacco processing and cigarette manufacturing complex near the southern city of Sihanoukville with an investment of close to US$60 million. However, a few years hence, the premium cigar idea emerged when the company hired Cuban sommelier and master blender Dr. Luis Antonio Sorinas Gonzalez as its technical director, who eventually created two whole lines of Cambodia-made longfiller cigars. “What we’re trying to do [with these brands] is blending two cultural realms together: the ancient culture of Angkor and the ancient cultures of Central America, where tobacco originated and the cigar was born,” said Adrian Lee, Power Tobacco’s marketing manager.
Gonzalez meticulously started training local workers under strict guidance to eventually become expert torcedores while simultaneously developing the company’s first cigar line, Padrino, in 2018. The range, which was specifically created for the Spanish market, but “also any other connoisseur who enjoys the aroma, taste, and creamy smoke of old-style Cuban cigars,” according to Adrian Lee. The range exclusively uses carefully selected Caribbean tobaccos in its blend and comes in Half Corona, Short Robusto, Robusto, and Cañonazo formats.