What Is It With Curivari?

That can be re-phrased as “What the hell is going on with Curivari?!” For someone like me who loves their cigars, it can be amazingly frustrating figuring out what their lines are. So far, I’ve had: Buenaventura, Seleccion Privada, Seleccion Privada Maduro Reserva Limitada, Reserva Limitada Cafe Noir, Gloria de Leon, Socrates, Aristotele, El Gran Rey, Sun Grown Maduro. I’ll be getting a box of each of the Classica and Classica Maduro in the next month or so. I usually don’t buy 5ers of any of their cigars because I haven’t had a bad one yet.

But it’s practically impossible to find out if they’re offering anything new. The last I heard, they released the Gran Reserva at PCA 2025. The only site I found that sold it was Small Batch and it was out of stock! It’s still out of stock!

A blogger wrote that Curivari is the “most secretive brand in the business.” They do zero marketing. They have no reps. They show up at PCA each year but go to no other shows.

I spoke with one of the owners of West Coast Cigars about Curivari as they carry several of the lines and it’s where I discovered the brand. He said that Curivari is a tough nut to crack. He and his partner have wanted to bring them out for an event but because they have no reps, there’s no way to hold one. He also said – as others have mentioned – their phone doesn’t always work!

But somehow, they have managed to stay in business all these years. It’s uncanny. Most businesses that operate on a purely word-of-mouth model don’t usually stay in business very long except if they have such good products they don’t need to spend money on marketing. Curivari is one of those exceptions.

For Curivari fans, though we’d certainly like to see more from them, at the same time, many of us agree that if they did more marketing, their prices would go up. With no reps and no marketing, they don’t have the overhead so they can charge much lower prices. This is a good thing for those of us who love smoking boutique cigars but don’t want to dole out the money for a Padron or Opus X (though admittedly, I have at least one Padron a week).

I love the fact that they’re rolled at the Plasencia factory. To me, this is why practically all their sticks look and feel so nice. To date, I haven’t had a Curivari that has had any construction issues. No cracked or peeling wrappers, wildly uneven burn lines, or inconsistent rolls. No, they’re not perfectly smooth like Davidoff sticks, but damn they’re still nice-looking cigars!

Oh well… frustrated as I am, I still love the brand. In fact, I just called West Coast Cigars to order a box of the new Gran Reserva since I can’t get them online. I know, I’ll probably pay a bit of a premium, but c’est la vie!