David Savona
Posted: July 2, 2013
For nearly five years, Alec Bradley owner Alan Rubin has had a cigar brand on his mind called Mundial. The word, which means “global” in several languages other than English and is common to fans of World Cup soccer, was to evoke a special smoke Rubin hoped would take his company to the next level. But every time he thought he was close, something interfered, putting the Mundial project on the back burner. But now he and his team are finally ready to bring it to the public.
“For the last few years, every time I went down to Honduras, no matter what I smoked, I always had Mundial on my mind,” said Rubin in an interview with Cigar Aficionado. “I knew what we wanted, but it had to happen organically. It’s finally going to be released.”
Early on he didn’t have the blend. Later, the success of the Alec Bradley Prensado (named Cigar Aficionado’s Cigar of the Year in 2011) interfered in its own way. “We couldn’t make any changes then,” said Rubin. “It would have confused the marketplace.”
More than one year ago, Rubin found the taste he was looking for. “We had eight blends, smoked through the eight, but I couldn’t wrap my head around it. So I sat on it. Ten months ago, I said ‘Let’s revisit that blend.'”
Only 3,000 boxes of Mundial, each containing 20 cigars, will be available in 2013.
The leaves that finally came together in the way Rubin wanted were a wrapper grown in the Trojes region of Honduras (which Alec Bradley also uses on Prensado); two binder leaves, one from Honduras, another from Nicaragua; and a mix of four filler tobaccos from Nicaragua and Honduras, with a very heavy component of Estelí ligero.
Production on the brand will be limited, due to production capacity, in 2013 to 3,000 boxes containing 20 cigars each. “That’s all we can do,” said Rubin.
Alec Bradley Mundial cigars were rolled in Honduras at the Raices Cubanas factory. Alec Bradley is also debuting a Raices Cubanas cigar at the trade show: for more on that, and more on the Mundial, see next Tuesday’s edition of Cigar Insider.