Cusano Maduro Coming To Retail This Month

Source from:  Cigar Aficionado 04/20/2016

The recently invigorated Cusano brand will be offered in a maduro wrapper and the new, dark variety should be hitting the market in the next few weeks. This comes after brand owner Davidoff of Geneva rebranded and relaunched its Cusano core line earlier this year.

News of the Cusano Dominican Maduro first appeared in early February when Davidoff announced the initial brand reboot after two years of inactivity, but details were scarce at the time. It is now known that the Dominican Maduro will feature the same internal blend as the Cusano Dominican Connecticut-an Ecuadoran Connecticut binder with Dominican filler-but will be draped in a Mexican San Andrés wrapper.

Cusano's Dominican Maduro will come in the same four sizes as the core line: Toro, measuring 6 inches by 50 ring gauge; Robusto, 5 by 50; Churchill, 7 by 48; and Gordo, 6 by 60. The cigars will ship in slide-lid wooden boxes of 16 and carry suggested retail prices ranging between $4.49 and $5.99, keeping with Cusano's value-priced mission.

Cusano was founded by brothers Joe and Michael Chiusano in 1995 as part of DomRey Cigar Inc. The brand was made primarily by Davidoff's Hendrik Kelner; however, Davidoff had no financial stake with Cusano until it acquired the brand in 2009. Michael Chiusano resigned from the company less than a year after the acquisition, and Joe Chiusano briefly took his brother's place as president before resigning himself in 2011.

According to Cusano brand manager Dylan Austin, the Dominican Maduro and Dominican Connecticut mark the first wave of Cusano's reinvigoration. Austin said that details on a second wave of cigars-a Nicaraguan blend, as well as the revival of Cusano bundles, which are mixed-filler versions of the premium blends-are expected to arrive in May. Enditem