2019 PCA Magazine

PREMIUMCIGARS.ORG JULY-AUGUST 2019 | PCA The Magazine 21 “there were 70 ring gauges out there fromother makers, but I noticed in a lot of the shops I visited the biggest cigars were often out of stock.” Customers looking for really big cigars were going away frustrated, and this suggested an opportunity. “I don’t pay very close attention to what others are doing, not as much as I try to figure out what other people are not doing,” Lazuka says. So in 2012, when he and Eiroa were putting together the Asylumbrand, Lazuka pitched the notion of large ring gauges from the outset. “I said, ‘Let’s do a 70.’ Christian was skeptical, but he agreed.” One key consideration: Eiroa just had tomake sure in designing the blend that he specified tobaccos themen knew they could reliably obtain. “This was just so we couldmake lots of themand never have the supply issues we saw in the competition’s big ring gauges,” explains Lazuka. The twomen discussed a T H E B L E N D name. “Shrek” was mentioned as a perfectly apt descriptor, but the potential legal issues involved gave rise to a search for some other moniker they could safely lay claim to, and the line was christened Ogre. It was two years after launch that Eiroa suggested the addition of the 80 ring gauge, “just so the 70 would look normal,” Lazuka wryly observes. Inmany ways, the Ogre line is Lazuka’s baby. He developed the concept for the cigar’s design in a barn in Ohio. It was really only a personal hobbyshop kind of project at first, something Lazuka wanted to create “There isn’t a lot of selection out there if a guy is looking for a really huge cigar, and a lot of the people who come in here are looking for big ring gauges. But beyond supplying that need, the Ogre line features fantastic construction and a flavor in the medium- bodied range. ” 70x7 LANCERO 80x6 60x6 11/18 52x6 50x5 Christian Eiroa of C.L.E. Cigar Company, left, and Tom Lazuka, co-owner of Asylum 13 Cigars