...I know what makes a good cigar. It’s much more than taste...

I wanted to produce a cigar under my own name that would reflect the insight, gained over the years, into what I know smokers of fine, hand made cigars want in their product, what they deserve.

Having come from the era when the finest cigars in the world sold for US$0.50 - $0.70, when the most popular price was US$0.35, 3/$1.00 for a Cuban Corona and when price increases were few and far between—I can show you price lists spanning the 1940s to the 1960s in which the prices don’t vary more than a nickel per cigar—the prices being paid today, even now after the “boom,” are astonishing. As I’ve read under the pen of the largest cigar retailer in the world, the difference between a five dollar cigar and a ten dollar cigar is, more often than not, five dollars. DiMeolas retail between $3.95 and $6.75 before local taxes.

What makes a good cigar? Check the page in which I talk about why the best cigars in the world taste the way they do, having to do with construction and fermentation.What Makes Them So Good? But there’s one more thing not mentioned there, namely, consistency. For the money we get for our cigars these days, the smoker is entitled to the best tobacco, fully fermented, well blended in a superbly constructed cigar that burns evenly and draws well – every time, not just 80% or 90% of the time – every time. Oh, look, OK, this is a hand made product we’re talking about, so, from time to time, there might be one a bit off. That’s to be expected—except by me in a DiMeola, if I may slip in a commercial—but generally the smoker deserves and expects consistency. To me, that’s the most important quality.

There’s the question of strength. The trend today is toward more powerful cigars. Some of the ones on the market now are too strong even for me. I want character, complexity, flavor and aroma, but I don’t want to be knocked over. I want to relax and enjoy the experience. I believe most cigar lovers want the same thing. That’s what I’ve created in the DiMeola.