Jose “Pepin” Garcia along with his children Jaime and Janny, started making cigars in a little factory in Miami, Florida over twenty years ago. At that time, their first private label client was Pete Johnson and his brand Tatuaje. In early 2003, Pete met Pepin at an event in Los Angeles, CA and immediately knew that Pepin was the man that he wanted making his cigars. From that day forward, the Garcia’s and Pete have been working together on blending, manufacturing, and distributing of some of the most sought-after cigars in the world.
To commemorate the 20th anniversary of their working relationship, both My Father Cigars and Tatuaje have created a limited-edition project named La Union. “La Union” (The Union), a trademark owned by My Father Cigars, consists of two different crafted boxes, one in black and the other in red. The logo for “La Union” features an artistic rendering of Pete shaking Jaime’s hand with Pepin blessing the union, which represents the bond and commitment to family and hard work that the Garcia’s and Pete have had since the first cigar was rolled in 2003. Each limited-edition box will come with forty cigars, twenty of the cigars are blended by My Father for Tatuaje, the other twenty cigars are blended by Tatuaje for My Father. All cigars were blended and produced at My Father Cigar S.A. in Estelí, Nicaragua.
The cigars for both boxes measure 7 1⁄4 x 50 and are finished with a traditional Cuban 109-style head. The size is named Prominente Especial. Cigars blended by Pete Johnson will have a covered foot while the cigars blended by the Garcia’s will have an open foot. All the tobacco used for binders and fillers are grown by the Garcia family, including the famed Pelo de Oro which has been grown by the family since 2008. For the wrappers, Pete chose for his cigars, Nicaraguan shade grown Corojo 99 for the black box and Ecuador Sumatra for the red box. The Garcia’s chose to use Ecuador Habano for the black box and Connecticut USA Broadleaf for the red box.
Each box will be individually numbered. The black boxes will range from 1 to 1500 and the red boxes will range from 1501 to 3000. Therefore, there will be 1500 boxes of each color, of which 1200 remain in the United States and 300 allocated for international accounts. The black box is expected to be released in early 2024, while the red will follow later.
Each box comes with a Xikar Xi1 Perfect Cut cigar cutter. The suggested retail price of the cigar, no matter the blend, is $60 per cigar.