{"id":27547,"date":"2019-01-31T14:18:49","date_gmt":"2019-01-31T13:18:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/?p=27547"},"modified":"2019-01-31T14:22:15","modified_gmt":"2019-01-31T13:22:15","slug":"brun-del-re-costa-rican-cigar-pride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/brun-del-re-costa-rican-cigar-pride\/","title":{"rendered":"Brun del R\u00e9: Costa Rican Cigar Pride"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brun del R\u00e9 has been the leading tobacco producer in Costa Rica for many years now and to owner Carlo Corazza heritage is important.<\/em><\/p>\n

The most well-known cigar company to come out of Costa Rica is Brun del R\u00e9. With brands like Brun del R\u00e9 Gold, Premium, Colonial and 1787 Libertad, and 1638, Carlo Corazza has established himself especially in the European market.<\/p>\n

Like so many times before, it started with a trip to Cuba. \u201cI quit smoking cigarettes in 1999,\u201d he says. \u201cThen, in 2001, I went with a friend to Cuba and I tried smoking cigars. I liked it very much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Setting up Operations in Costa Rica<\/h3>\n

At the time, Corazza owned a watch company, which he still does, but after his trip, this long-time Costa Rican resident from Switzerland was convinced by his friends to enter yet another business.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey kept asking me to open up a cigar lounge, so I did. Mundo de los Puros is actually located in the same mall as one of my watch stores and I soon got the rights to brands like Davidoff, Perdomo, and the Cubans.<\/p>\n

\"Brun<\/p>\n

Company founder Carlo Corazza set out to conquer the world in 2006. | Photo: Christian L\u00fcnig<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

However, it wasn\u2019t all smooth sailing from the beginning. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t easy to teach people about cigars. They all wanted Cubans, so I started handing out Davidoffs, Perdomos and other non-Cubans to show them what was out there and make them try something different.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

After a while, he also decided to create his own cigars. \u201cI started with one roller outside of the lounge. People liked it so much I introduced a second one. In 2006, I said to my business partner, Sam Capuano, like Pinky and the Brain: \u2018Let\u2019s conquer the world.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when Brun del R\u00e9 was born. It\u2019s the last name of his grandmother and a royal family crest in Switzerland from over 200 years ago. At that time, parts of his family had tobacco fields in the north of Italy.<\/p>\n

In order to produce his cigars on a larger scale he found a factory in the Costa Rican capital, San Jos\u00e9, in 2007. \u201cSam and I discussed whether we were going to have our own factory or let someone else make the cigars, but we wanted full control. We didn\u2019t want to depend on a second or third party. So we learned the whole process from scratch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Staying Boutique<\/h3>\n

Today, Brun del R\u00e9 cigars are available in 22 countries, and that\u2019s about as big as Corazza wants to get. The company has around 15 employees and produces roughly 25,000 to 30,000 cigars per month.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re still a boutique cigar manufacturer and I\u2019d like to grow more, but not by quantity, by quality. We\u2019re like the Patek Philippe of cigars. We want the highest quality in everything, even packaging. It\u2019s all very important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although a few Costa Rican cigar companies exist, Costa Rican tobacco hasn\u2019t been high in demand. That may be about to change, and it turns out that the country has a rich tobacco history.<\/p>\n

\"Brun<\/p>\n

Photo: Simon Lundh<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cOur marketing guy found out at the library that Costa Rica was the first country in the region to export 1,000 pounds of tobacco. This was back in 1638, and that\u2019s why I created a brand called 1638. It puts Costa Rica on the map and proves that it was, and is, a tobacco country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Corazza\u2019s 1787 line refers to an important time in Costa Rican tobacco history while taking national cigar pride even further. \u201cIt\u2019s the first cigar I made using 100-percent Costa Rican tobacco. I found someone in the south of the country who grows really good tobacco. 1787 refers to a time when Central America belonged to the Guatemalan kingdom and Costa Rica was a known producer of high-quality tobacco for high-class people.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brun del R\u00e9 has been the leading tobacco producer in Costa Rica for many years now and to owner Carlo Corazza heritage is important.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":27549,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[49,2808,178,44],"tags":[716,2800,5737,5356],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27547"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}