EPC is Making the Inch Nicaragua

EPC is making the Inch Nicaragua, or better said, EPC created the Inch Nicaragua but Plasencia Cigars is making it for them. It’s kind of the same situation as with the Casa Magna, a cigar created and owned by Manolo Quesada but made in Nicaragua by the Plasencia family.

About a decade ago, Ernesto Perez Carrillo released the Inch. These are thick cigars, ring 64 and thus an inch in diameter (ring gauge is measured in 64th of an inch) and it soon became very popular amongst the lovers of thick ring gauges. Now the two famous families are working together on an all Nicaraguan version of the big ring gauge cigars.

“They have so much tobacco,” Perez-Carrillo says of the Plasencias. The wrapper is a shade-grown leaf from Jalapa, and there is tobacco from Estelí and Condega on the inside as well. “It has a completely different flavor profile than the regular Inch, which is Dominican. We must have gone through at least 20 different blends. January 2022, that’s when the final blend came about.” The result is a medium to full bodied smoke with a peppery character, balances by caramel sweetness.

Inch Nicaragua will come in three sizes: The No. 60, at 5 7/8 inches long by 60 ring; No. 62, at 5 by 62; and No. 64, at 6 1/8 by 64. Pricing will be equal to the Dominican Inch.

Cigarmakers Nestor Andres Plasencia (left) and Ernesto Perez-Carrillo at a Las Vegas Big Smoke.