Crowned Heads Cigars

Although Crowned Heads officially got its start in late 2011, the Crowned Heads story starts further back in time. Jon Huber, one of the company’s co-founders, has the kind of origin story in the business that truly produces a great cigar. After Huber spent years simply chasing money, he walked into a retail tobacconist and had his life fundamentally change. Absorbed by the incredible aromatics of his first premium cigar, he began searching high and low for opportunities to simply be around bright cigar minds and up and coming boutique blenders. He was hand driving, shipping and packaging cigars long before he was behind the big desk, calling shots for some of the highest-rated cigars in the world; a group of smokes that includes multiple 90-plus rated lines from the prestigious and difficult-to-crack review process from Cigar Aficionado magazine. Reviewers have fallen in love with the adventurous spirit behind Crowned Heads cigars, which are known for their ideal construction, even burn and spacing of unctuous and diverse flavors, which can shift one minute from molasses to ginger to juniper before settling on a mature and sharp black licorice, as the profile of the incredible Le Pâtissier goes. Notable, too, is the fact that many of these cigars, despite their lofty aspirations, sit at a price point that is more than accessible for those who are hoping to up their humidor game and experiment with something a little out of the ordinary.

Huber and fellow co-founder Mike Conder were long-time employees of CAO International, having spent 15 years growing the brand at its Nashville headquarters. In late 2010, however, a corporate merger between Swedish Match and STG, which resulted in the modern General Cigars lineup as we know it today, would upend CAO to its core.

Rather than tucking their tails between their legs and making the easy move to STG’s headquarters in Richmond, the duo took a huge risk. While coming to terms with the end of CAO as they knew it, Huber heard a song by the famous rock band Kings of Leon that inspired the duo to strike it out on their own. In 2011, the Crowned Heads brand was born with its inaugural line Four Kicks, named after the very song that captured Huber’s imagination.

As the first line to come out of Crowned Heads, Four Kicks cigar was not only a stellar top-notch cigar, but it was also a statement to the industry that Crowned Heads was here and making noise. Made at the famous Tabacalera La Alianza in the Dominican Republic, Four Kicks features a core of aged Nicaraguan tobaccos surrounded by an Ecuadorian Habano wrapper. Complex and balanced medium-bodied flavors of pepper, cocoa, espresso, earth, and leather made Four Kicks and Crowned Heads an instant success.

Crowned Heads would go on to release hit after hit with lines like the Headley Grange, Jericho Hill, and Juarez, all in some way related by music. But one of the best cigars to come out of Crown Heads is inspired by the process of cigarmaking itself: Mil Dias. Translating to “1000 Days,” it is named after the time it takes to go from tobacco seed to a finished cigar.

Mil Dias cigars starts with a center of Costa Rican, Peruvian, and Nicaraguan long fillers all packed inside a thick Nicaraguan binder and finished with a top-quality Ecuadorian Habano wrapper. 1000 days of effort pay off with a complex medium-full bodied tapestry of peppery spice, earth, espresso, cedar, and notes of a creamy tobacco sweetness. Check out this Mil Dias cigar review to get a closer look at it.

This is just scratching the surface of all the fantastic blends that Crowned Heads features in its top-rated portfolio. Find out why Crowned Heads is lauded as one of the greatest boutique cigar brands on the market by ordering your Crowned Heads Cigars online from Cigars.com today.