New Zealand gets Crowned

New Zealand gets Crowned. Crowned Heads that is. The cigar brand from Job Huber and Mike Condor will be available down under soon. The brand and Canteros agree on a distribution partnership, resulting in the availability of the cigars in New Zealand.

Crowned Heads

From the ashes of CAO, Crowned Heads emerged. CAO is a Tennessee brand, but in 2010 things changed. Their parent company, Scandinavian Tobacco Group, and competitor Swedish Match formed a joint venture. The portfolio of STG merged with General Cigars, which was part of Swedish Match. General Cigars has a headquarter in Virginia and CAO had to move. Some of the CAO executives are loyal to Tennessee and the long time employees of CAO. So they quit and went to form their own cigar brand. That brand is Crowned Heads.

Most of the lines from the cigar company find inspiration in music. The inaugural Four Kicks comes from a Kings of Leon song. The Jericho Hill like and the offspring Juarez all have links to Johnny Cash. The Folsom Prison concert, and specifically the song Cocaine Blues, are the inspiration for the names of those lines. And there are more cigars from CW with links to music.

 Crowned Heads uses Tabacalera La Alianza in the Dominican Republic for some of their lines. That’s the factory of Ernesto Perez Carrillo. But other lines are made at the My Father Cigars factory in Esteli, or at Tabacalera Pichardo, also in Esteli, Nicaragua.

About Canteros

Grant Ovenden, aka the Cigar Merchant, is importing cigars as a business since 2015. It was impossible for cigar enthusiasts in New Zealand to find any new world cigars. As Ovenden and most of his friends have a preference for the flavorful cigars from Nicaragua, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic, it was time to start importing and distributing. Since then, Canteros has grown exponentially and many big brands work with Canteros now.