Handcrafted in Danli, Honduras by Oscar Valladeres, who began making premium cigars with his brother Hector, and friend, Bayron Duarte, in 2012. Oscar's career began 9 years earlier working for Rocky Patel, and Bayron's resume included over 20 combined years with General Cigar and Oliva. A year earlier Oscar was running a modest cigar shop in Danli with a couple of rollers, but at the end of 2011 he, along with Hector and Bayron bought a small factory and made cigars under the Oscar Valladares Tobacco & Co. 2012 label. Like his "Leaf by Oscar" cigars, they were presented wrapped in dried tobacco leaves to simulate the ancient Mayan cigars. The folks in charge at Leaf by Oscar will be the first to tell you that the rough and rustic look of its packaging - a dried tobacco leaf that's used in lieu of cellophane or rice paper - is enough to make you do a double take...but it's the beauty of the cigars underneath that matters.
Island Jim had brought a group of ten people down to Oscar's factory in Honduras, and at the time, legally, each person could bring 100 cigars home with them. This accounted for the first 1000 cigars, which Jim figured would last him long enough until he figured out the logistics to get the remaining 4000 stateside. As fate would have it, Leaf by Oscar was an instant hit. It sold so well that the initial thousand cigars sold out within the first week. The rest soon made their way to Pittsburgh and sold out within a month.
The selling continued. Additional runs gained popularity, but Jim was intent on keeping the cigars as a house only blend. By the time the 11th call made it to his phone, he knew that he had to give wings to the blends. Today, Leaf by Oscar is sold around the world.
Today, the fruits of the partners' labors have paid off with high praise and tasting scores for their cigars, including the 2012 by Oscar cigars that returned to the market in 2017 as a tribute to their first year in business. The cigars, all rolled to a 6" x 52 Toro, are offered in 3 wrapper choices - Connecticut Shade, Sun Grown Corojo, and San Andres Maduro - each outstanding in their own way.
The Oscar Habano cigars offer you a smooth, complex, full-bodied smoke using fillers and binder from Honduras and Nicaragua and rolled in gorgeous Ecuadorian Habano wrappers; and each cigar is presented inside a dried Candela wrapper. The shapes include a Robusto, a Toro, and a Sixty offered in boxes of 11 cigars and bundles of 20.
If you haven't had the pleasure of Oscar's company, there's no time better than now to add these fine, humidor-worthy cigars to your collection. Do so today by dropping some in your cart.
