Frank Llaneza 1961 cigars are handmade with the darkest Ecuador Criollo wrapper I have ever seen, and must have been selected one leaf at a time or fermented over and over and over. You people who know me, or have read some of my dribble over the years, know that I’ve always said that the difference between a two-dollar cigar and a 10-dollar cigar is eight dollars. Well, if there ever was such a thing as a 10-dollar cigar, this is it.

A while back, I asked Frank how he was able to get Ecuador wrappers so dark. He explained that he worked with the Oliva tobacco family of Tampa on this project, and decided that the only way to consistently produce a cigar with his own name on it (only the second time in his life that he had done that, the first being the El Rey del Mundo Flor de Llaneza—a cigar that I have always touted as possibly the best cigar in the world) was to make three brands simultaneously and sort the wrappers for color… and this brand is the darkest wrapped one of the three.

These cigars have Frank Llaneza's “Cubanesque,” heavier-bodied touch that made brands like Hoyo, Punch, Excalibur, El Rey del Mundo, and others into such mainstays of today’s premium-cigar business. A definite winner in the list of fine cigars crafted by the late Frank Llaneza.