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Tosa Cigar Company and Website Premiere
June 17, 2011
Thomas B. Bender (TommyBB)
Editor-in-Chief.
In this age of instantaneous “social networking” which seems able to aggregate many millions of people in one virtual place, grouping by interest is an intended outcome. This also provides for any number of entities intended to capitalize on the interest, why many springing forth into existence almost at a moment’s notice. Over the last 24 hours or so, Facebook cigar smokers have learned of and been linked to what appears to be one of these. Tosa Cigars website has made its splash, today, but there have been postings and other hints and notes of its arrival over the last number of days and weeks.
Skeptics, a term many seasoned cigar smokers will embrace, may note this development as yet another in a annual routine preceding the International Premium Cigar and Pipe Retailers Association Trade Show. Some will immediately dismiss this development. But upon further investigation, it appears something different is afoot with Tosa. The Richfield, Ohio-based company is a subsidiary of the Crossroads Group, which has lead to a collaboration with another company more well-known and esteemed: Toraño Family Cigars.
Tosa’s website says this about the new operation:
Tosa comes from the Aramaic word for "Gabrail," the last name of Mike Gabrail, a co-founder and current president of Tosa Cigars. When Mike first thought to create a cigar brand, it was something he thought he would do much later in life, perhaps as far down the road as twenty or thirty years. But with the motivation of his family and close friends, he got started a little earlier than expected. Thanks to the help of The Torano Family Cigar Company and Tosa's parent company, Crossroads Group, Mike spent the better part of a year sampling different blends and combinations to come up with what he believes to be a perfect premiere cigar. With the cigar industry moving younger and younger, in terms of consumers and managers, it is only appropriate that Mike continue to run this operation out of love for the cigar, as well as love for the inspiration his cigars give others. Tosa Cigars hopes to be a beacon of light in helping form the direction of an industry that is constantly being targeted by much of the world's War on Tobacco. Mike hopes that his inspiration and ideas transfer to Tosa Cigars to not only create top quality blends, but to re-create top quality freedoms as well; freedoms that have been enjoyed by so many for centuries before, freedoms that are now targeted on a daily basis to be for expelled from everyday life.
This research, and the Toraño Family Cigars own, well-liked cigars, bode well for this first Tosa offering, which is a single line of cigars, with three vitolas, only: robusto, toro and Churchill.
“Handmade in the Dominican Republic by Toraño Family Cigar Company, Tosa Cigars' Reserva 22 sports a Habano seed grown in Ecuador for the wrapper, a Dominican Olor binder, and a filler containing Dominican Corojo ligero and seco, as well as tobaccos from Peru and Nicaragua.”
When I founded this company, my intent was to instill my passion and appreciation for cigars into my own products and blends. And with the help of The Torano Family Cigar Company, and our parent company Crossroads Group, I feel that we are accomplishing that intent more and more each and every day. With the debut of new cigars, coupled with our struggle to fight for cigar smokers' rights, we are continuously working to bring better product to consumers, as well as ensuring that their right to smoke is not abridged further.
It remains to be seen how Tosa intends to ensure cigar smokers enjoy the privilege to smoke. It appears, however, starting small with the one line in only three sizes, collaborating with a well-established partner bodes well. The first reckoning among smokers will come about once the cigar has been sampled and at what price-point they are available.
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