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  • A

    The 25 Best Cigars of the Year 2011 more info »

    Ed_lim_2010-closed
    Date: January 10, 2012
    Publisher: Cigar Aficionado
    Author: David Savona
    New York, NY

  • B

    E.P, Carrillo Adds Broadleaf Maduro more info »

    Ed_lim_2010-closed_internet_version
    Date: July 22, 2011
    Publisher: Cigar Aficionado
    Author: David Savona
    New York, NY

  • C

    Best of the Best 2011 - E.P. Carrillo Edición Limitada 2010 more info »

    Ed_lim_2010-closed_internet_version
    Date: May 30, 2011
    Publisher: Robb Report
    Author: Richard Carleton Hacker
    Malibu, CA

  • D

    Miami Cigar Queen Finds Sanctuary in the Quiet of Her Own Backyard more info »

    Ed_lim_2010-closed
    Date: February 9, 2011
    Publisher: MSN
    Author: MSN
    Miami, FL

  • E

    The 25 Best Cigars of the Year 2010 more info »

    Ed_lim_2010-closed
    Date: February 9, 2011
    Publisher: Cigar Aficionado
    Author: David Savona
    New York, NY

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The 25 Best Cigars of the Year 2011

Address: New York, NY
Ed_lim_2010-closed
Website: www.cigaraficionado.com

The 25 Best Cigars of the Year 2011
E.P. Carrillo Golosos

Ernesto Perez-Carrillo has been making cigars for more than 40 years. He learned his craft by working alongside his father in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood, where the family made La Gloria Cubana cigars. Perez-Carrillo developed a reputation for making serious cigars that were appreciated by connoisseurs, and his brand soared in popularity and became an industry mainstay.

Today Perez-Carrillo has set out with his son and daughter to make a cigar under his own name in the Dominican Republic. He began with limited-edition smokes, and in 2010 he finally came out with his core line of regular production smokes called E.P. Carrillo. None are finer than the Golosos, a 60-ring-gauge behemoth that is creamy yet spicy, taking on savory notes of leather and a black-cherry sweetness.

MADE BY: Tabacalera La Alianza
FACTORY LOCATION: Dominican Republic
WRAPPER: Ecuador
BINDER: Dom. Rep.
FILLER: Nicaragua, Dom. Rep.
PRICE: $8.70
RING GAUGE: 60
LENGTH: 6 1/4"
RATING: 92

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E.P, Carrillo Adds Broadleaf Maduro

Address: New York, NY
Ed_lim_2010-closed_internet_version
Website: www.cigaraficionado.com

Ernesto Perez-Carrillo has been slowly increasing the breadth of his product line, but there was one thing missing—a maduro. This week at the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers trade show, he unveiled his version of a maduro cigar, and it's shipping at the end of next week to cigar stores.

"A lot of people were asking for a maduro," Carrillo told Cigar Aficionado today. "I had looked at Mexican maduro, Brazilian—but this one shined."

This one is Connecticut broadleaf, a hearty, dark and rugged leaf that Perez-Carrillo first used in the 1970s in Miami, when he was making La Gloria Cubanas. Perez-Carrillo is using broadleaf grown in the Connecticut River Valley in 2008/09, which he claimed was superb, with superior yield and great flavor.

He's used the leaf to create the E.P. Carrillo Maduro, an eight-size line that's identical in dimension and suggested retail price to the lineup of the E.P. Carrillo "core" line. The cigars come in No. 4 (5 1/2 by 42, $5.25); Encantos (4 7/8 by 50, $6.45); Regalias Real (5 5/8 by 46); Club 52 (5 7/8 by 52); Churchill Especial (7 1/8 by 49); Predilectos (a torpedo measuring 6 1/8 by 52); Golosos (6 1/4 by 60) and Monumentos (7 3/8 by 56). They retail for $5.25 to $9.30 per cigar and are made at Perez-Carrillo's factory in Santiago, Dominican Republic.

The E.P. Carrillo natural line is made with an Ecuador Sumatra wrapper and a Nicaraguan binder; the maduro has Connecticut broadleaf wrapper and Ecuador Sumatra binder. While the two share the same filler blend on paper, a mix of Dominican and Nicaraguan, Perez-Carrillo had to make an adjustment when his workers rolled the maduro.

"On the core, we put a leaf of seco" in the filler blend, he said. "When we tried that with the maduro, it got a little bland. So we substituted a leaf, or in some cases half a leaf, of viso, and that completely changed the blend. Half a leaf can make such a big difference."

The cigars are going to ship beginning next week.

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Best of the Best 2011 - E.P. Carrillo Edición Limitada 2010

Address: Malibu, CA
Ed_lim_2010-closed_internet_version
Website: robbreport.com

One shape, one size, one cigar—but a different blend each year: That is the philosophy behind the EPC Cigar Company’s limited-edition releases. EPC stands for Ernesto Perez-Carrillo, the man who brought La Gloria Cubana back to life in America when he inherited the brand from his father. Now Perez-Carrillo’s La Gloria days are behind him, and he is running his own boutique cigar company with the help of his son, Ernesto Perez-Carrillo III, and his daughter, Lissette Perez-Carrillo. The E.P. Carrillo Edición Limitada 2010 (www.epcarrillo.com, $15), his second limited-edition release, is rolled in the company’s new, 40,000-?square-foot factory in the Dominican Republic’s free zone. The cigar far surpasses EPC’s much milder 2009 edition. With its tanned-leather Hab­ano Brazilian wrapper, Dominican binder, and Nicaraguan filler, this 6 x 54 toro is brimming with sweet spice, and a perfect match for a Cerbois Bas Armagnac XO.

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Miami Cigar Queen Finds Sanctuary in the Quiet of Her Own Backyard

Address: Miami, FL
Ed_lim_2010-closed
Website: rediscover.msn.com

One of Lissette Perez-Carrillo's favorite places is her own backyard. Her son and daughter can play in the pool, while she and her husband, Frank McPhillips, enjoy the lush foliage. She might even smoke a cigar.

Cigars are the family business. After nine years in New York, she is back in Miami, working with her father, Ernesto Perez-Carrillo, and her brother, also named Ernesto, in their new boutique cigar company, EPC Cigar Co.

The Miami she left at 21 for law school was not the same Miami she returned to nine years later. "It was kind of a shock coming back," she says. "I moved into a city that was different from the one that I left."

The neighborhood of Little Havana, where she grew up, was no longer predominantly Cuban-American, but home to an ethnic stew of various immigrant groups: Nicaraguans, Salvadorans, Hondurans, plus non-Latinos and second-generation Cuban-Americans who saw a chance to revive a fading area near downtown.

Perez-Carrillo and her husband, now parents to 7-year-old Frank and 4-year-old Skye, live in Coral Gables, a leafy enclave of Spanish-style homes, big trees and climbing vines of colorful bougainvillea and hibiscus. Coral Gables, too, has grown, its once-sleepy downtown now filled with popular cafes and restaurants.

"The architecture here is beautiful, and it's very serene and there are lots of trees," says Perez-Carrillo, 37.

If the family wants Cuban food, they're just minutes from Versailles, a Miami institution and the heart of Cuban Miami since it opened in 1971. The décor may be tacky and dated, but that doesn't keep anyone away. At Versailles (pronounced ver-SIE-yess), Cuban-American Tea Party supporters mix with gay men just in from the monthly Viernes Culturales (Cultural Friday) street party and tourists visiting from the Midwest.

As far as Perez-Carrillo is concerned, Versailles has the most authentic Cuban food in Miami. At least it's the most authentic outside her mother's kitchen. Her mother, Elena, gets top marks for her picadillo (a dish normally made with ground beef but made with turkey at Lissette's request), "awesome" black beans and rice, and yucca with garlic.

When Perez-Carrillo and her husband want to dress up and go out for dinner in Coral Gables, they might choose Ortanique on the Mile, known for its creative Nuevo Latino cuisine. Their kids like burgers at Duffy's Tavern, a historic sports bar nearby.

When they're willing to leave their backyard, the family enjoys special celebrations amid 83 acres of rare tropical plants at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, a unique botanical paradise of palm, cycads, mangos and flowering trees.

With the new family cigar business, Perez-Carrillo has returned to her roots. Her grandfather started El Credito Cigar Co. in Cuba in 1948 and reopened in Miami after the family fled the country. Lissette started working at the company when she was a little girl, putting the rings on the cigars and wrapping the cigars in cellophane. As she got older, she moved into office work.

Her father's creation of a new La Gloria Cubana cigar in 1992 catapulted the company to fame, and her father sold El Credito to a Swedish company in 1999. Now Lissette, her father and her brother run their new boutique family cigar business together.

Perez-Carrillo is happy to be back in Miami, back in the family cigar business and back with her extended family. She thinks Miami will be a good place for her children to grow up, just as it was for her. "They get exposed to different cultures," she says, "and I think that's important."

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The 25 Best Cigars of the Year 2010

Address: New York, NY
Ed_lim_2010-closed
Website: www.cigaraficionado.com

The 25 Best Cigars of the Year 2010
E.P. Carrillo Elencos Edición Limitada 2010

Rank: 8

Ernesto Perez-Carrillo has been making cigars for a long time. He learned his craft from his father, working in Little Havana at their tiny factory called El Credito Cigars, the birthplace of the non-Cuban La Gloria Cubana. That smoke became one of the first true hits of the cigar boom, and grew into something far larger. Later Perez-Carrillo sold his business to Swedish Match AB, and in March 2009 he resigned from the company to forge a new cigar business with his son and daughter: EPC Cigar Co. He has come out with four cigars since 2009: the E.P. Carrillo Short Run, his so-called “core” line, and two limited editions, one each year. The E.P. Carrillo Elencos Limited Edition is his newest, and perhaps his best, a sweet and savory smoke that combines flavors of caramel and leather. The only flaw with this cigar is its rarity—the company is only making 1,000 boxes, each containing 10 cigars. Perez-Carrillo is back in a big way.

MADE BY: Tabacalera La Alianza
FACTORY LOCATION: Dominican Republic
WRAPPER: Brazil
BINDER: Dom. Rep.
FILLER: Nicaragua
PRICE: $15.00
RING GAUGE: 54
LENGTH: 6"
RATING: 94

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