LGC MdO #2 Officially discontinued?

[Fugu]

6 hours ago, Sir Diggamus said:

One would think that with less overall tobacco required to produce cigars like ERDM Grades de Espana, Mdo1, Partagas SdC 1, 2, &3 that these would be more profitable to produce.

Basically, that thought is correct for sure, you do need less tobacco per cigar for a smaller calibre. But - what you need for making it is mostly higher-quality tobacco. While not every thin-gauge cigar is automatically a better cigar - you can hardly make a decent thin-gauge cigar with 'weak' tobacco in the mix. On the other hand you can very well hide more volado and other subpar leaf in the filler of a wider gauge cigar without compromising a smokeable outcome too much. What's missing in concentration will be made up by sheer volume (of smoke). Sure - you will also still need a decent portion of good, flavourful leaf, but in "diluting" it and "bumping up the volume", the thicker format cigar will then also realise a higher price in the market (an often heard notion being: "getting you 'more cigar' for the money"). So what actually happens is that now, a much better use can be made of otherwise unused leaf. And rolling them - as you said - is more forgiving in those formats, too. Not just mechanically but also in terms of blend consistency. I am not meaning to insinuate a necessarily poorer result, and there are some very good wide-gauge cigars (well, few and far between...haha) but there is much more free play and less limitation in the production of a thicker cigar.

Just look e.g. what they did to the former Le Hoyo series, for an intra-brand example.... or - QdO anyone? Text book examples! And if you look at published numbers, it is quite striking that volume of sales by units stays more or less the same the last few years while revenue is steadily on the rise. And that even whilst general ring-gauge is going up.

It is no secret that Tabacuba is limited in basically two fields: That being A) the amount of quality leaf, and B.) the number of skilled rollers. When trying to maximize revenue, the adverse effects of both can best be mitigated by making exactly those formats we currently see being "en vogue" - .... or, what marketing makes us believe so. A third limitation, that is in quality wrapper leaf, can be overcome by making shorter formats (short fatties) and by getting rid of very demanding formats in this respect such as DCs and Churchills (Dalias, Cervantes)....

Adding to that perhaps - and coming back to the particular topic of La Gloria Cubana - might be the fact, that there has always been a rather poor cost-of-packaging / contained-tobacco (-value) ratio for the MdO series. But substantially raising prices on an otherwise already unpopular format is not a way to go obviously. Letting go completely and instead come back with something new and shiny does the trick.

This all being solely my personal take on it of course...

[Corylax18]

6 hours ago, Sir Diggamus said:

One would think that with less overall tobacco required to produce cigars like ERDM Grades de Espana, Mdo1, Partagas SdC 1, 2, &3 that these would be more profitable to produce. I miss all the skinnies greatly. 

Filler tobacco is almost free compared to wrapper leaves. We're talking a 15-1 or 20-1 difference between volado and wrapper leaf. Wrappers take far more effort to produce than filler leaves, both in the field and during processing and a high percentage of what is produced doesn't make the grade for export grade cigars. 

So, the more filler HSA can pack into each wrapper leaf, the better. For HSA. 

[BeerPimp]

I really do like El Presidente's suggestion that instead of killing some of these cigars that are still popular just release them every 3 years.   You will drive up the price of them when you do release them so they will be more profitable.

[Ciscojohansson]

I see that the San Cristobal El Morro is on the Fugus list. Does it come in any other format than 25 count box? I dont think so. Is the El Morro is discontinued?

[JohnS]

1 hour ago, Ciscojohansson said:

I see that the San Cristobal El Morro is on the Fugus list. Does it come in any other format than 25 count box? I dont think so. Is the El Morro is discontinued?

Yes, it is definitely discontinued. It hasn't been seen around since 2014.

[Connoisseur Kim]

1 minute ago, JohnS said:

Yes, it is definitely discontinued. It hasn't been seen around since 2014.

Like JohnS, I haven't seen them on 24:24 for loooong period of time! Same goes on HdM Le Hoyo Des Dieux... ?