In the cigar industry, the Meerapfel family is famous for cultivating and selling tobacco from Cameroon in West-Central Africa. At a certain point in the early 2000s, one of the buyers of this tobacco was cigar industry legend Julio Eiroa, who was celebrated in his own right for growing some of the world’s finest corojo-seed tobacco to be had outside Cuba.
Based in Honduras, Eiroa was so well-known for his grade-A “Authentic Corojo” tobacco, that in 2015 — at the age of 77 — he set up a new company called JRE Tobacco to make puro Honduran cigars, many of which would be comprised of the leaves from his famed corojo-seed plants.
Eiroa had long wanted to grow his own Cameroon tobacco — but not in Cameroon; he wanted to grow it in the same place where he grew his corojo-seed plants — on his farms in the Jamastran Valley of Honduras.
Determined to do so, Eiroa got ahold of Cameroonian seeds, put them on a patch of land, and waited patiently for the plants to grow. In time, they did, but the leaves ended up looking nothing like what Eiroa and others had been used to from the Meerapfels; instead of being rough, mottled, and toothy like typical Cameroonian wrapper leaves, Eiroa’s leaves were clean and reddish in color.
Disappointed, Eiroa thought to himself that he needed to keep refining his growing techniques. But at this point, one of his salesmen insisted on taking some of Eiroa’s leaves and rolling a few cigars with them. The two men smoked the finished product and were astonished. Indeed, Eiroa’s wrappers were at least as good, if not better, than what Eiroa had been buying from the Meerapfels.
Thus, in 2020, the Aladino Cameroon line from JRE was born, featuring wrappers made from Eiroa’s Cameroon-seed tobacco and binders and fillers from his celebrated corojo-seed varieties, creating 100% self-made, self-sourced, puro Honduran cigars.
This vitola of that line, the Robusto, is reasonably thick and butterscotch-colored. Affording an excellent draw, even burn, and superior construction, the medium-strength, medium-to-full-bodied Robusto begins on a dry note but soon gives way to earthy and woody essences of pine, walnuts, caramel, apple, baker’s spices, and black pepper.
Available in boxes of 24, these complex cigars stand out from other Cameroonian smokes (both genuine and Cameroonian-seed products) due to their sweetness. Cigar Aficionado accorded these sticks a rating just one point shy of 90. Pick up a box today — and see for yourself how Julio Eiroa beat the Meerapfels at their own game.