Aladino is a brand of cigars that’s a legend in the making. Launched by venerable tobacco grower and cigar blender Julio Eiroa of JRE Tobacco in 2015, this auspicious brand is named after an old movie theater in Danlí, Honduras, that’s been owned by the Eiroa family for several generations. In 2012, the family closed the theater and turned it into a factory where they rolled cigars. Today, the operation belongs to Christian Eiroa, Julio’s son.
“I remember from the old days how important it was for a brand to have a name that was easy to remember,” Julio explains. “Aladino reminds people of [our] story and is easy for English speakers to pronounce.”
In fact, after a lifetime spent cultivating tobacco and making cigars, it was the opportunity to start a new brand that lured Julio out of his supposed “retirement” in the Bahamas. In 1995, he purchased cigar brand Camacho and revived the label before selling it to Davidoff in 2008. After this, Julio continued growing and processing tobacco, which he supplied to Camacho after the sale until his agreement ended with the company, and he was free to once again do as he pleased.
Eiroa has quite a history; born in Pinar del Rio, Cuba, to a tobacco-growing family, Julio left Cuba in 1960 but continued working in the cigar business, first for Perfecto Garcia in Tampa, Florida, and then Oliva Tobacco in Honduras. It was in Honduras’ Jamastran Valley in the 1960s where he nurtured difficult-to-grow Cuban corojo-seed crops until they were “as good or better” than what was coming out of Cuba, according to the late Angel Oliva, one of the most respected figures in the industry. Of course, Eiroa had some help, notably from legendary Cuban ex-agricultural official Jacinto ‘Tino’ Argudin (who had first smuggled out Cuban corojo seeds to Central America), in the beginning. But over the last 60 years, Eiroa has perfected world-class “Authentic Corojo”-seed tobacco in Honduras, and today, Aladino cigars are 100-percent puro Honduran, and use this tobacco in most of their wrappers, binders, and fillers.
Now, Julio’s other son Justo has joined him in the business, and together, both men labor tirelessly over JRE and Aladino (Julio at age 85!) “from crop to shop.” According to Julio, in both their taste and their classic sizes, Aladino cigars are meant to approximate smokes from the golden age of what was produced in pre-embargo Cuba from 1947 to 1961 (indeed, these years are imprinted on these sticks’ marketing collateral). Have a good look at their range, and see if there’s an Aladino vitola just for you.