Don Lino Cigars
Don Lino cigars are an exquisite option for value-conscious connoisseurs who don’t believe in sacrificing quality or flavor to save on the prices. Don Lino offers a solid collection of mild to medium-bodied profiles with pristine construction and a silky richness. Available in a handful of outstanding wrapper varietals, Don Lino brings together relentless satisfaction and unimaginable savings like nobody’s business.
CIGARS
Don Lino Casa Verde
Price Per Cigar:$3.49 - $4.243 options availableStrength: MildCountry: Dominican RepublicWrapper: Candela34 Reviewsread more
Don Lino Dark Horse
Price Per Cigar:$3.24 - $4.995 options availableStrength: MediumCountry: Dominican RepublicWrapper: Ecuador Habano35 Reviewsread more
Don Lino Fumas
Price Per Cigar:$2.74 - $2.993 options availableStrength: MediumCountry: Dominican RepublicWrapper: Sumatra74 Reviewsread more
Don Lino Millennium
Price Per Cigar:$3.49 - $4.493 options availableStrength: MediumCountry: Dominican RepublicWrapper: Sun Grown17 Reviewsread more
Don Lino Trojan Horse
Price Per Cigar:Only $5.491 option availableStrength: MediumCountry: Dominican RepublicWrapper: Ecuador Habano6 Reviewsread more
SAMPLERS
DON LINO BRAND HISTORY
Don Lino is a cigar brand that emerged in tandem with the Cigar Boom of the 1990s under the direction of Cuban-born Nestor Miranda. Having spent decades in the spirits industry as a sales representative for the Southern Wine and Seagrams companies, Miranda had established extensive relationships with a number of liquor stores in Florida and around the country. In the late 1980s, he crossed paths with a cigar roller who worked for Guillermo Leon, owner of the Dominican Republic-based La Aurora brand. Miranda became enticed by the thought of cross-promoting cigars with certain brands of spirits he sold. Miranda’s liquor store accounts responded positively to the concept and consumers readily bought the cigars.
By 1989, the potential for growth in the cigar world was palpable. Nestor and his wife, Mariana, established their own cigar distributorship, Miami Cigar & Company. The business quickly blossomed outside of liquor stores and into premium cigar shops. The pair contracted US Tobacco (UST), a sizeable tobacco conglomerate, to make the Don Lino brand beginning in 1989 at a factory in Honduras. The first Don Lino cigars sold for around $19 a box, very inexpensive by today’s standards. A modest 80,000 Don Lino cigars sold in the brand’s debut year. The couple’s timing couldn’t have been better. The Mirandas were at the precipice of a massive surge in demand for premium cigars, known as the Cigar Boom. Don Lino Production doubled in 1990. By 1995, they were making 3.1 million cigars, a figure that shot up to 12 million in 1996 – an unprecedented amount of growth. In 1995, Nestor retired from the spirits business to focus exclusively on his burgeoning cigar enterprise. Miami Cigar & Company began to distribute a handful of other brands as well.
Despite the rapid growth, UST pulled out of their contract with Nestor in late 1996 in an attempt to sell cigars to his accounts directly. The move precipitated a contentious lawsuit as Nestor’s cigar business was halted in its tracks at the peak of its success. UST eventually settled with Miranda out of court, but the Cigar Boom had cooled off by the time it was resolved in 2002. Miranda had always retained ownership of the Don Lino franchise, but its presence in the marketplace diminished while the brand’s production shifted from UST’s Honduran factory to other suppliers after a period of adjournment. The brand has since been produced in a handful of Central American cigar factories.
Miami Cigar & Company continues to distribute La Aurora, as well as the signature Nestor Miranda Collection, and the flavored Tatiana line. Nestor even introduced Don Lino Africa in the mid-2000s, a cigar inspired by an African safari he embarked upon. Although a handful of early construction issues impeded the cigar’s reception, its packaging was admired by a number of retailers and consumers.
Today, the majority of Don Lino blends are handcrafted at a premier boutique factory in the Dominican Republic, noted for delivering high quality, consistent cigars at a low cost. Value-conscious cigar lovers have come to embrace Don Lino for a bargain-centric portfolio that includes a number of wrapper varietals in classic formats.
DON LINO BRAND OVERVIEW
There is no shortage of tasteful, well-made cigars to discover under the Don Lino umbrella. The brand is lauded as an impeccable choice when you’re in need of cigars for a causal golf outing, bachelor party, or backyard barbeque. Big discounts apply to the entire franchise and have made the brand a ‘go-to ‘gar’ for deal-seekers and sales-obsessed aficionados.
Although, the signature Don Lino recipe is handcrafted in Nicaragua, all other blends are handmade at a celebrated boutique manufacturer in the Dominican Republic. The Nicaraguan edition, simply called Don Lino, is drafted from an all-Nicaraguan blend of tobaccos that delivers a spicy medley of wood and leather notes.
A premium Cuban-sandwich blend, Don Lino Fumas, is the among brand’s bestsellers, starting at under $20 for twenty cigars. Prices that predate the rise of the Cigar Boom make it hard to pass up Don Lino Fumas when you need a bundle of basic smokes for mowing the lawn or shoveling the driveway.
Don Lino Dark Horse displays a rich, medium-bodied profile of earth, cedar, black pepper and sweetened coffee courtesy of an Ecuador Habano wrapper leaf over an aged selection of Dominican and Nicaraguan long-filler tobaccos. A similar blend is available in plus-sized dimensions of 7 x 60 in Don Lino Trojan Horse, when you need a shape that will break the hour-plus smoking barrier for under three bucks a stick. An oily Ecuador Habano wrapper encapsulates an all-Dominican, handcrafted core with notes of cocoa and wood.
Don Lino Casa Verde is an uber-popular Candela edition drafted from an emerald-green wrapper and a mild, approachable interior of Dominican long-fillers. Notes of toasted nuts, green tea, wild grasses and cream grace the palate in an elegant shape your pals will surely notice thanks to the cigar’s vivid green hue. Try Don Lino Millenium for a profile draped in a cocoa-hued Sungrown wrapper leaf cultivated from Cuban seeds. The medium-bodied blend serves up notes of cedar, leather and cayenne pepper guaranteed to turn heads starting at just $2.49 per cigar in elegant 20-count boxes.
Don’t overlook Don Lino cigars when you want value without sacrificing taste, construction, or consistency. It’s tough to make a wrong turn when you can score the pedigree of a Cigar Boom classic at sub-wholesale prices every day of the week. Check out the reviews left by Don Lino’s biggest devotees when you need a bit of extra perspective on which blend to dive into first. There’s a good reason why we call Don Lino, ‘The Don of Discounts.’ Taste it for yourself.
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