Lash Ash Newsletter July 2026

The Last Ash Newsletter

July 2026

The Last Ash | July Edition

        July is here, and if you're doing it right, you've already got a cold drink in one hand and a premium stick burning down slowly in the other. Summer is the season that reminds us why we do this — long evenings on the back porch, the kind of heat that makes a great cigar feel earned, and enough daylight left after dinner to smoke something worth remembering. At The Last Ash, we look forward to this month all year. Not just because the weather is built for it, but because July gives us a reason to reach for the boldest, most complex cigars in the humidor and enjoy them exactly the way they were meant to be enjoyed — without rushing anywhere.

This month's curation is one I'm genuinely proud of. Every stick that made it into your box earned its place through a combination of score, story, and sheer smoking pleasure. We're talking about cigars that scored 90 points and above, sourced from some of the most respected rolling houses in Nicaragua, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic. Whether you're a beginner just starting to find your palate or a seasoned aficionado who's been chasing rare releases for years, the selections inside this newsletter were chosen to give you a moment — not just a smoke. There's a difference, and that difference is what The Last Ash is built on.

Read about the blend, the origin, the maker. A great cigar has a story behind it, and knowing that story makes the smoke better every single time — trust me on that. Welcome to July. Pull up a chair, clip the cap, and let's get into it.

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Cigar Companion: The Best Hardware for Every Smoker

Rado Anatom Automatic Skeleton

Rado has spent four decades building a reputation as watchmaking's self-styled "Master of Materials," and the new Anatom Automatic Skeleton feels like the brand finally connecting two threads that had been running in parallel for years. The original Anatom debuted in 1983 with a Warhol-adjacent New York launch, built from ultra-hard tungsten carbide before being reworked in high-tech ceramic in 1986, the update that gives this year's 40th-anniversary framing its weight. Meanwhile, skeletonization has quietly become a signature move across Rado's other core lines, the Captain Cook, the True Square, the DiaStar, making the Anatom's absence from that list feel less like a deliberate choice and more like unfinished business. This release closes that gap.

What makes the Anatom worth skeletonizing in the first place is its case. The watch takes its name from its anatomical design philosophy, a curved, cylindrical sapphire crystal and ergonomic case built to hug the wrist rather than sit flat against it. Measuring 32.5mm across, 46.3mm lug-to-lug, and 11.5mm thick, the case is rendered in matte grey plasma ceramic, a Rado-specific finish that carries a subtle metallic shine distinct from standard high-tech ceramic. Open the dial up and that architecture becomes the point: rather than concealing the movement behind a solid face, the Anatom Skeleton lets the case's sculpted geometry frame an unobstructed view straight through the watch.

That view centers on the Calibre R808, Rado's modern automatic workhorse, now presented in full openworked form with gray bridges, anthracite-coated components, and yellow gold-colored wheels and cogs providing color contrast against the monochrome ceramic case. The hairspring is visible at 12 o'clock, the barrel and mainspring occupy the lower half of the dial, and the crown's keyless works are exposed at 3 o'clock, giving the wearer a genuine mechanical narrative rather than just a decorative cutout. Functionally, it's no haute horlogerie showpiece, an 80-hour power reserve and Nivachron antimagnetic hairspring built for reliability rather than complications, but the finishing suits a watch built around transparency rather than artisanal excess.

At $4900, the Anatom Skeleton isn't cheap for the segment, but it lands at a fair price for a ceramic watch built around a genuinely distinctive case shape and a movement most brands wouldn't bother dressing up this well. For a design language now four decades old, it's a rare case of a reissue finding a genuinely new angle rather than just repackaging nostalgia, and it gives Rado's ceramic story a fitting centerpiece for its 40th-anniversary year.

S.T. Dupont Ligne 2

Cohiba 60th Anniversary

Some milestones call for cake. Cohiba's called for gold-finished guilloché engraving and a Native American profile cut into black lacquer. To mark the brand's 60th anniversary, S.T. Dupont has reunited with Habanos S.A. for a limited collection of lighters and accessories, and the Ligne 2 sits at the center of it as the most accessible entry point into a lineup that also includes a Le Grand Dupont lighter, a table lighter, an XL ashtray, a cigar cutter, cigar cases, and cufflinks. It's the second time the two houses have collaborated on a Cohiba anniversary, following a similar release for the brand's 55th, and this edition leans even harder into the visual language that's defined Cohiba since its earliest days.

The Ligne 2's design pulls directly from Cohiba's own iconography. The body is finished in glossy black lacquer, with a perforated version of the brand's Native American head cut through the metal using an exclusive precision technique, an innovation S.T. Dupont is introducing with this specific collection. The cap carries the Cohiba checkerboard pattern rendered in a gold-finish guilloché engraving, echoing the geometric squares found on the cigar's own band. Every element, the black-and-gold coloring, the silhouette, the checkerboard square, ties back to Cohiba's visual identity in a way that reads less like branding and more like a faithful translation of the cigar band itself into metal and lacquer.

Underneath the craftsmanship sits genuine engineering. Like other lighters in the Ligne 2 family, this one runs a double soft yellow flame system, built through S.T. Dupont's signature 300-step artisanal manufacturing process, the same standard the maison has held to across its 150-plus year history. It's a lighter built to function as reliably as it looks, not simply a display piece.

Scarcity is baked into the release by design. Production is capped at 1,966 pieces, a direct nod to the year Cohiba was founded, a detail that ties the lighter's rarity back to the same heritage story the design itself is telling. Only part of the full Cohiba 60th Anniversary collection launched this June; the remaining pieces from S.T. Dupont's Haute Création workshop are expected to follow in November, giving collectors a second wave to watch for later this year.

La Flor Dominicana $20K Humidor

Some cigar releases mark an anniversary or a collaboration. Espejo de Litto marks something more personal: a look back at one man's entire career. La Flor Dominicana is releasing nine humidors at $20,000 apiece, each holding 150 hand-rolled cigars split across three never-before-released blends, all built to trace the arc of Litto Gomez's life in tobacco. The project first surfaced earlier this year at the ProCigar Festival in the Dominican Republic, where an early version of the humidor sold for $51,000 at the event's annual charity auction, a number that set the tone for just how far La Flor was willing to push this one.

The three blends inside function almost like chapters in a memoir. Origins, a 7 x 52 dressed in Cameroon wrapper, reaches back to the nostalgic, vintage La Flor flavor profile that defined the brand's early days. Litto's Revolution, a 7 x 54 built in the company's now-iconic Chisel shape with an Ecuador Sumatra wrapper over an all-Dominican filler, represents Gomez's rejection of convention, the same maverick instinct that made the Chisel format one of the most recognizable silhouettes in the industry. Futura, a 7 x 52 wrapped in Brazilian leaf, looks forward rather than back, framed as a preview of where the brand's legacy is still headed.

The humidor itself matches the ambition of what's inside it. Built atop a metal base, it opens through a pair of French doors to reveal three drawers, one for each blend, with a flip-down hook on the side designed to hold a hat or scarf, a small but deliberate nod toward the humidor functioning as a piece of furniture as much as a storage case.

Tony Gomez, Litto's son and an active member of the company, described the project as going further than anything the brand has attempted, framing it as the story of an outsider who broke into the cigar industry without guarantees or permission and helped reshape it on his own terms. At $20,000 a piece, Espejo de Litto isn't built for the average humidor. It's built for collectors who want a physical record of how La Flor Dominicana got here, one blend, one chapter, at a time.

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Cigar of the Month

 

My Father Le Bijou 1922 Torpedo

Some cigars are built to honor a legacy, and few carry that weight as gracefully as the My Father Le Bijou 1922 Torpedo. Crafted by Jaime Garcia as an homage from his father, Pepin Garcia, to Pepin's own father, the blend takes its name from the elder Garcia's 1922 birth year, with "Le Bijou" translating to "the jewel" in French. Where the standard My Father line leans on an Ecuadoran wrapper, this offshoot goes darker and bolder, dressed in a Nicaraguan Habano Oscuro leaf that's oily, toothy, and almost black in places. It's the kind of cigar that announces its intentions before you've even clipped the cap.

Light it up and the Le Bijou 1922 doesn't ease you in. Expect an early wave of cayenne-forward pepper that settles quickly into a deep, layered core of espresso, dark chocolate, leather, and cedar. As the smoke progresses, sweeter notes emerge underneath the darkness, hints of dried fruit and cream soften what could otherwise be an overwhelming profile, and the pepper migrates to the retrohale rather than dominating the draw. The torpedo's tapered cap concentrates that complexity beautifully, and the soft box press gives the cigar a substantial, comfortable feel in hand. Construction is typically flawless, with a clean burn and effortless draw across the roughly 75-minute smoke.

This is the cigar that took Cigar Aficionado's #1 Cigar of the Year honor in 2015, and nearly a decade later it still holds up as one of the most complete full-bodied smokes on the market. It rewards patience and a full stomach rather than a rushed break. At roughly $11 to $13 a stick, it isn't an everyday cigar, but for a night that calls for something with real gravity, paired with a barrel-proof bourbon or a rich stout, the Le Bijou 1922 remains a benchmark for what Nicaraguan tobacco can deliver.

Origin: Nicaragua Size: 6 1/8 × 52 Torpedo Wrapper/Binder/Filler: All-Nicaraguan Strength: Full Price: ~$11–$13   

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New Cigar Releases

La Aurora Family Creed

Perserverancia

​La Aurora didn't need to prove anything with the Family Creed series, the Dominican Republic's oldest cigar factory has been earning its reputation since 1903, but Perseverancia makes the case anyway. As the second chapter in a four-part line built around the León family's guiding principles, it follows last year's Fuerte Sol with a blend meant to go even further. The word itself, Spanish for perseverance, speaks to the resilience that's carried the León family and their factory through more than a century of cigar-making, and the blend backs that sentiment with real substance: a dark, oily Pennsylvania Broadleaf wrapper over a Mexican San Andrés binder, wrapped around long-fillers pulled from Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and additional Pennsylvania leaf.

On paper, that combination reads like a heavier, darker cigar than what La Aurora typically produces, but Perseverancia doesn't lean on brute strength to make its point. The cold draw offers bread and a soft sweetness, while the pre-light nose brings dried fruit and fresh-cut cedar with no rough edges. Once lit, the smoke opens with cocoa and peppery spice before moving through cedar, roasted nuts, espresso, and molasses. Green peppercorn threads through the middle stretch before the profile shifts toward a rich hot chocolate finish, with the Broadleaf wrapper contributing texture and richness rather than raw heat. The box-pressed shape helps the draw stay effortless and the burn stay even throughout.

What stands out most is the composure. Perseverancia carries more weight on the blend sheet than Fuerte Sol, yet it never turns heavy-handed or loses articulation. It's full-bodied without tipping into fatigue, structured rather than blunt, and it's already generating buzz for a spot on this year's Top 25 lists. For smokers who want depth and history in the same stick, this one delivers on both.

Wrapper: Pennsylvania Broadleaf | Binder: Mexican San Andrés| Filler: Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Pennsylvania Broadleaf | Strength:Full 

Montecristo 1935 Anniversary Edición Doble Diamante Red

Montecristo doesn't put its name on many cigars at this price point, and the Doble Diamante Red is a statement about just how far Altadis U.S.A. is willing to push its flagship brand. It's the second expression in the Doble Diamante line, itself an offshoot of the well-regarded 1935 Anniversary Edición Diamante series that A.J. Fernandez and Rafael Nodal built a few years back. Where the original Diamante line runs a more accessible $16 to $26 a stick, the Doble Diamante jumps into rarified territory, built from hand-selected tobaccos out of Fernandez's own reserve, including leaf from his celebrated Finca la Lilia and San Lotano farms in Estelí.

That pedigree shows in the smoking experience. The Red opens with a rich, layered profile of spice and leather before settling into cocoa and espresso as it progresses, a full-bodied but well-composed smoke that stays balanced from the first third to the last. Construction leans on a precise soft box press, and the wrapper carries a deep, slightly-darker-than-chocolate hue with just enough oil to catch the light. The finish is clean and unhurried, the kind of long, satisfying close that a cigar at this price needs to deliver if it wants to justify the number on the band.

Presentation matters here as much as tobacco. Each set arrives in a 20-count cedar humidor finished in high-gloss piano lacquer with metal accents, individually numbered for collectors. At $150 a cigar, the Doble Diamante Red isn't built for the everyday humidor, but for a special occasion or a serious collector's shelf, it delivers the kind of craftsmanship and flavor depth that backs up the price tag.

Wrapper: Nicaraguan puro | Binder: Nicaraguan puro | Filler: Nicaraguan puro | Factory: Tabacalera AJ Fernandez Cigars de Nicaragua S.A., Estelí | Strength: Full

1916 Tabacalera Eiroa

Some cigar names commemorate an anniversary. This one commemorates a lineage. 1916 Tabacalera Eiroa marks 110 years since Generoso Eiroa first began cultivating tobacco, and the blend was developed by his great-grandson, Santi Eiroa, the fourth generation of the family to work the leaf. Rather than replicate a single relative's style, Santi built the blend to sit between two poles: his father Christian's preference for full-bodied smokes and his grandfather Julio's leaning toward milder ones. The result is meant to land in the middle, a deliberate meeting point between generations rather than a tribute to just one.

The blend itself draws on tobaccos with deep family history. Both the wrapper and binder use a five-year-aged Habano leaf, while the filler combines Original Corojo with the rare Pinareño seed, a Cuban-origin varietal the Eiroas have preserved and cultivated for decades. That extended aging shows in the smoking experience: it's a cigar built for balance rather than intensity, offering the kind of composed, patient construction you'd expect from a blender who had the luxury of time and a well-stocked family tobacco vault to draw from.

Available across five vitolas from Robusto up to El Gordo, with pricing that stays approachable in the $16 to $19 range, 1916 Tabacalera Eiroa reads less like a limited vanity project and more like a genuine addition to CLE's regular lineup. For Santi, the release carries weight beyond the blend sheet, it's framed as a way to bring a new generation of smokers into a tradition his family has carried for over a century, while giving longtime Eiroa fans a cigar that reflects where the family's palate has landed today.

​Wrapper: Honduran Habano | Binder: Honduran Habano | Filler: Honduran Corojo and Pinareño | Factory: Eiroa family production, Honduras | Strength: Medium-Full

La Flor Dominicana Carbon Flower

Not every cigar collaboration reaches beyond tobacco, but La Flor Dominicana's Carbon Flower does exactly that. Paired with accessory maker ProjectCarbon, the release pairs a bold full-bodied blend with a striking carbon fiber travel case built to outlast the cigars themselves. It's a partnership between two very different disciplines, LFD works with soil, leaf, and fire while ProjectCarbon works with structure and material precision, and the result is a rare case where the packaging carries as much weight as the tobacco inside it. The pigtailed toro extra, finished at 6 by 54, sets a dark, dense tone from the moment it's in hand.

The blend leans into that darkness. A Mexican San Andrés maduro wrapper sits over a matching San Andrés binder, wrapped around Dominican filler grown exclusively on LFD's own La Canela farm. That combination gives the smoke real density and structure from the first draw, with the profile settling into earth, espresso, and bittersweet chocolate through the midsection before deepening into dark roast coffee, charred wood, and dark chocolate by the final third. Subtle spice threads underneath throughout, and the finish is long, heavy, and layered, closing on lingering cocoa and espresso notes that match the boldness the case promises.

What makes Carbon Flower stand apart is that the packaging isn't disposable. Each $200 set includes five cigars housed in a reusable, airtight carbon fiber case built to carry future cigars long after this release is gone. With production capped at 1,500 sets, it's a one-and-done collaboration by design, but one that's already drawn attention as one of the standout releases to come out of this year's PCA show, both for what's inside the wrapper and what the wrapper comes packed in.

Wrapper:Mexican San Andrés maduro | Binder: Mexican San Andrés maduro | Filler: Dominican | Factory: Tabacalera La Flor S.A., Dominican Republic | Strength: Full

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Cigar Tip of the Month:  Why Your Humidor Needs Boundaries

One easy fix that gets overlooked in a lot of home humidors: keep your strong and mild cigars stored apart. Tobacco is porous by nature, which means cigars sitting side by side will absorb aromas and oils from their neighbors over time. A delicate Connecticut-wrapped smoke stored next to a full-bodied Nicaraguan puro can pick up notes it was never meant to carry, dulling the subtlety that made you buy it in the first place. If your humidor has multiple trays or dividers, use them to separate by strength rather than just by brand or size. And if you're working with a single-space humidor, even something as simple as keeping strong cigars in a separate travel case or bag for a few weeks can make a real difference in preserving each blend's true character. It's a small habit, but it pays off every time you reach for something mild and actually get to taste it as intended.

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From Barrel to Ash: Exploring Whiskey, Rum, and More

Barrell Bourbon Cigar Blend

Barrell Craft Spirits has built its reputation on being first to the party, first with rhum and Madeira blends, first with unusual mashbill experiments, first with finishes other distilleries later copied. So it's a little surprising that it took the Louisville blending house nearly a decade to release its own cigar blend bourbon, a category popularized back in 2016 by blender Nancy Fraley's work on Joseph Magnus Cigar Blend. Cigar blends have no legal definition; each producer interprets the category on its own terms, built around a simple premise: a whiskey rich and bold enough to hold its ground next to cigar smoke rather than disappear underneath it. Barrell finally entered that conversation this March, and by most accounts, the wait was worth it.

The approach here is classic Barrell: source good whiskey from multiple states, then let creative finishing do the heavy lifting. This release blends straight bourbons aged anywhere from 7.5 to 18 years, pulled from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Indiana stocks, then finished simultaneously across four different cask types, Madeira, Armagnac, rum, and Hungarian oak. That combination is deliberate rather than random. The Madeira and rum casks pull the blend toward sweetness, while the Armagnac and Hungarian oak bring spice and drier, more tannic structure, giving the whiskey a push-pull complexity that mirrors what a good cigar pairing actually needs.

On the palate, that complexity shows up in layers. Expect an opening built on dark fruit, dried plum, and baking spice, with the mid-palate pulling in stewed red fruit, mixed berry jam, and cherry alongside dried oak, leather, and sweet tobacco leaf, an especially fitting note given the blend's purpose. Rye spice and cinnamon carry through the middle before pulling back into a finish that closes on brown sugar, black peppercorn, and clove. Bottled at cask strength, the whiskey has enough weight and density to stand up to smoke without losing its own shape, dense and rich enough to sip slowly whether or not a cigar is actually involved.

At under $90, Barrell's first cigar blend lands as a genuinely strong value in a category that's grown crowded and, in places, gimmicky. Reviewers across the board have called it one of the strongest releases in Barrell's catalog to date, high praise from a brand that rarely misses. For TLA readers building a cigar-and-spirits pairing night, this is as good a starting point as the category currently offers.

ABV: 55.6% | Age: 7.5 to 18 years | Casks: Madeira, Armagnac, rum, and Hungarian oak (four cask types, simultaneous finish)| MSRP: $84.99–$89.99

Four Roses

Mizunara Cask Finish

For a distillery that's spent nearly 140 years leaning on its ten-recipe system rather than secondary maturation, Four Roses stepping into cask finishing is a genuine departure. Experimental Series No. 001 marks the brand's first-ever finished whiskey, and it's a fitting way to open the chapter: a six-year-old OBSK recipe bourbon rested in rare Japanese Mizunara oak. Master Distiller Brent Elliott and his team reportedly ran trials across recipes, yeast strains, and barrel specifications before settling on this combination, then tracked the barrels almost weekly during finishing to keep the Mizunara influence in balance rather than letting it take over.

That balance shows in the glass. Mizunara is notoriously difficult to work with, porous, leak-prone, and unpredictable, but prized for flavors American oak simply can't produce: sandalwood, incense, and dried fruit chief among them. Here, those notes sit alongside Four Roses' familiar bourbon backbone of vanilla, maple, and oak rather than overwhelming it, giving the whiskey a layered, structured profile with caramel, toasted oak, and delicate spice running through the core. The result reads less like a novelty and more like a genuinely considered pairing of wood and spirit.

The timing is notable too. This launch follows Four Roses' ownership transition from Kirin to E&J Gallo earlier in 2026, and it arrives alongside the brand's other new release, a 21-year-old Anthology Series bourbon, suggesting a broader push toward experimentation under new ownership. Whether traditionalists embrace the shift remains to be seen, but as a first attempt at cask finishing, Experimental Series No. 001 gives Four Roses fans a genuinely new flavor direction without abandoning what makes the brand's bourbon recognizable in the first place.

ABV: 52% | Age: 6 Years | Casks: Japanese Mizunara oak casks| MSRP: $55

Ardbeg Dolce

Every year, Ardbeg saves its most theatrical release for Ardbeg Day, the closing Saturday of Islay's Fèis Ìle festival, and this year's edition leans harder into contrast than most. Dolce takes its name and inspiration from Marsala dolce, the sweetest style of the famed Sicilian fortified wine, and pairs whisky matured in those casks with traditional bourbon-barrel Ardbeg. The 2026 packaging channels 1960s Italian cinema, and the whisky itself follows that same instinct: pairing Islay's rugged, briny peat character with something warmer and more indulgent, a distillery known for smoke deciding to flirt with dessert.

The nose opens with sweet, ripe fruit, apricot jam and orange marmalade layered over smoke that stays restrained rather than dominant, with hints of golden syrup, candied citrus, and dark cherry running underneath. On the palate, that balance carries through: baked fruit and gentle baking spice give way to chocolate and vanilla, building real creaminess through the midpalate before the peat resurfaces late, more like refined pipe tobacco than an ashy bonfire. It's a whisky built around tension, sweet against smoky, coastal against Mediterranean, and it largely succeeds at holding both in the same glass without either side overwhelming the other.

Reception so far has been strong, with several reviewers calling it among the better Ardbeg Day releases in recent memory and a whisky accessible enough to work as a gateway into peated Scotch for drinkers who normally shy away from it. At under $110, it also lands at a notably fairer price point than many recent limited Committee releases, making it a rare case of an experimental, story-driven bottling that's actually built to be opened and enjoyed rather than shelved.

ABV: 46.8% | Age: 21 Years | Casks: Ex-Bourbon, Oloroso & First-Fill Pedro Ximénez | MSRP: $450

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2026 U.S. Cigar Festival & Event Calendar

July

Procigar Night Punta Cana

Punta Cana, Dominican Republic | Jul 1 

Portland Cigar Festival

Portland, Oregon | Jul 9–12

Chicago Cigar Festival

Chicago, Illinois | Jul 22–26

August

Havana Night

Whippany, New Jersey | Aug 7 

Rocky Mountain Cigar Festival

Broomfield, Colorado | Aug 22

Brew City Cigar Festival

Glendale, Wisconsin | Aug 29 

Atlanta Cigar Festival

Atlanta, Georgia | Aug 30

September

Kansas City Cigar Festival (Trade Only)

Kansas City, Missouri | Sep 12 

Intertabac (Trade Only)

Dortmund, Germany | Sep 15–17 

October

CigarFest

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania |  Fall 2026

St. Louis Smoke Out

St. Louis, Missouri | Oct 9–11

November

Dallas Smoke Fest

Dallas,Texas | Nov 5–9

Cigar Aficionado’s Big Smoke

Las Vegas, NV | Nov 6–7