Brun del Ré

Brun del Ré is the house of a Swiss watchmaker turned cigar maker in Costa Rica. Carlo Corazza, long settled in the country, quit cigarettes in 1999, discovered cigars in Cuba in 2001 with a friend, opened a lounge, and in 2006 decided with his partner Sam Capuano to make his own — he tells of announcing it to his partner like a cartoon dare. In 2007 he found a factory in San José; it is now in Escazú, in the family, with some fifteen employees and twenty-five to thirty thousand cigars a month. The name is his grandmother's, and that of a two-century-old Swiss coat of arms.

It is, with Puriscal, the other home of the Costa Rican cigar, and the trade press gives it as the country's best-known house. Its lines are called Gold, Premium, Colonial, 1638, and above all 1787 Libertad — the first cigar Corazza made entirely of Costa Rican tobacco, from a grower in the south of the country; the date refers to the time when Costa Rica, within the Kingdom of Guatemala, supplied a sought-after tobacco. The house sells in twenty-two countries, mostly in Europe, and says it does not want to grow in quantity.

This atlas classifies here a house that rolls and, for one line, uses an entirely Costa Rican tobacco, from a planter in the south of the country — an exception in a country of workshops, one that Vegas de Santiago, in Puriscal, says it shares for part of its leaves.

Range Depth

• 1787 Libertad

  Wrapper Costa Rican, the house says · Strength Medium-Full

  The house's first cigar entirely of Costa Rican tobacco, from a grower in the south. The date: Costa Rica within the Kingdom of Guatemala.

• Premium

  Wrapper Undisclosed · Strength Medium

  The core line, with Gold and Colonial.

• 1638

  Wrapper Undisclosed · Strength Medium-Full

  Another date for a name.