Brun del Ré

Brun del Ré is one of the few premium brands from Costa Rica — a country that stands in the shadow of Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic as a cigar origin. The brand was founded in 2008 by Carlo Corazza, who had emigrated to Costa Rica around the turn of the millennium. There he initially had cigars made for his own circle; what began as an insider tip among friends and clients grew into an independent marca, whose name, according to the house, traces back to an old family line.

The manufactory has remained deliberately small: around fifteen employees produce approximately 25,000 to 30,000 cigars per month — a scale at which every cigar passes through few, familiar hands. At its heart lies Costa Rican tobacco, which the brand treats as a distinct terroir in its own right rather than concealing it behind better-known origins. The cigars are today distributed in more than twenty countries.

The range extends from the Premium and Gold lines through the anniversary series Bicentenario to the 1787 range with the blends Libertad and Rainforest; alongside these, the house maintains with its Culebras one of the most idiosyncratic traditional forms in the craft — three cigars wound around one another, as only a handful of manufacturers still produce (Culebra).