From Rich Perelman at CigarCyclopedia:

General Cigar announced the introduction of a new cigar in its Punch Rare Corojo line this week, the “El Doble.”

It’s a tribute to the late Bill Roethel, General’s Senior Vice President of Marketing, who died of cancer on February 21. The “El Doble” name came from Roethel’s nickname in the Dominican Republic, where, thanks to his hearty appetite, he sometimes ordered “double meals.”

The cigar itself is big at six inches in length with a ring gauge of 60 featuring the Rare Corojo’s signature Ecuadorian-grown, Sumatra-seed wrapper, Connecticut Broadleaf binder and filler leaves from the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Honduras. It’s a limited-production model to be offered at a retail price of $7.50 per cigar with each offered in a special, individual, clear-top coffin.

It’s the continuation of a trend toward bigger and bigger ring gauges on cigars.

For many years, it was unusual to see even 50 or 52-ring cigars in most lines. Now, those cigars are mainline and even considered small in some brands!

Take the billy-club-sized Cuban Parejo line from the Tabacalera Perdomo. Well ahead of its time when introduced in 2001, it offers eight shapes with the smallest spanning a ring gauge of 56. Six of the shapes run from a ring gauge of 60 to 62 and the line includes the largest ring-gauge model of any production cigar available in the U.S., the Galaxia, a 10-inch by 100-ring monster.

But the Cuban Parejo is hardly alone anymore. In the Cigar Almanac section of our 2005 Perelman’s Pocket Cyclopedia of Cigars, we listed 36 cigars with ring gauges of at least 64, making them one inch or more in diameter. The biggest of the big:

• 100 ring (by 10 inches): Cuban Parejo Galaxia

• 90 (x 12): La Tradicion Cubana The Big One

• 86 (x 7): Cuban Stock Classic Gigante

• 82 (x 7 1/4): Moore & Bode Full Brass

• 80 (x 8 1/2): La Tradicion Cubana Great Pyramid

• 80 (x 8 1/2): Sabor Cubano Great Pyramid

While some of these cigars are shaped to provide a reasonable presence in the mouth, others are straight-sided, making them hard to smoke!

Even the tradition-bound Cubans have joined the size explosion. For years, the biggest-ringed cigar made there was the torpedo-shaped Montecristo No. 2 with a ring gauge of 52. But in recent years, the perfecto-styled Salomones and Salomones II have emerged with ring gauges of 57. Plus, there are new straight-sided cigars with big ring gauges, such as the 52-ring Montecristo Edmundo introduced last year and a bevy of special-production models in the Edicion Limitada and Habanos Collection series. The current line-up of “big” Cuban cigars includes:

• 57 ring (x 7 1/4 inches): Salomones, a perfecto, available in the Cuaba line;

• 57 (x 6 7/8): Salomones II, also a perfecto, created as a special production model for Cuaba, Partagas and Montecristo;

• 57 (x 6 1/4): Gran Piramide, a torpedo, available as a special production model for Hoyo de Monterrey;

• 55 (x 9 1/8): Diadema, another perfecto, offered as a special production model for H. Upmann, Cuaba and Hoyo de Monterrey

• 54 (x 7): Rodolfo, a special production model for San Cristobal

• 54 (x 6 3/8): Sublimes, available as an Edicion Limitada for Cohiba.

The increase in size and flavor has to stop somewhere. In addition to taking up a lot of tobacco, there are relatively few rollers who can handle these large cigars and production is necessarily limited.

But “limited” will likely be the key word for such large-sized cigars in the future. The Cubans have made it clear that their focus will be on maintaining their current lines pretty much as they are and creating high-value, high-profit collectible cigars in the vein of the Edicion Limitada, Habanos Collection and Seleccion Reservas.

For manufacturers concentrating on the U.S. market, the opportunity is probably the same. With more than 1,000 brands available, it’s very difficult to start new brands from scratch. But limited-production or true limited-edition (made only once) cigars from existing brands will become more and more common. Beyond the novelty of introducing an extra-large cigar for its publicity value, look for more one-shot cigars like the Punch Rare Corojo El Doble to spark up special sampling packs or revive interest in brands which seem tired.