La Musa Cigars Arrive in Retailers

The long wait is over, as the La Musa Mousa cigars from the House of Emilio have begun to arrive in retailers across the country. Formerly known as "Grimalkin" the Mousa is the same delicious Habano Rosado wrapped cigar that won critical acclaim in 2011. Despite the name change the blend remains the same.

Halfwheel ranked the Grimalkin #3 on their Top 25 Cigars Consensus List last year, a true honor for a small cigar company. Bill Berris of Cigar Snapshot also ranked these cigars in the Top 10 of 2011, using a similar composite scoring method.

Craig Vanderslice included the Grimalkin, along with both the Emilio AF1 and AF2 in his list of Top Cigars .

Jerry Cruz of Stogie Review included them in his Top 10 Cigars of 2011 and they were runner up for Cigar of the Year on Tiki Bar Online.

As if that were not enough the cigars were included on numerous other Top Cigar lists in 2011, including both Ben Lee and Shawn Pratt of Nice Tight Ash, General  Griff of Mike's Stogies , Cigar Coop's Top 10 , number 4 on Seth's Humidor Top 25 of 2011, Cigar Explorer's Best 5 of 2011 , and Cigar Inspector's Top 10 Cigars of 2011.

All that having been said, we are pleased to bring these cigars back into retailers, and thank both our retailers and consumers for their wonderful support.

Emilio Cigars Announces La Musa Mousa Release

Gary Griffith, owner of Emilio Cigars, announced today that the long anticipated release of La Musa Mousa is scheduled for the week of November 5.  The initial shipments will occur by mid week to those who have placed preorders, followed by allocation of cigars to newer accounts wishing to open.

In addition to the previously available 3 sizes of robusto, toro, and torpedo, the La Musa Mousa will be available as a regular production cigar in corona size. Each year there will also be 200 boxes of lancero made available to select Emilio retailers.

As most are aware, this blend is the rebranding of the highly acclaimed Grimalkin cigars.

"We are pleased to finally see these cigars come to market", said Griffith, "and look forward to the announcement of the release date for La Musa Melete, second blend in this series, soon."

Interested retailers should contact National Director of Sales Nathan McIntyre for additional information on availability.

What's in a name?

I once made a cigar named Grimalkin. I named it this for a variety of reasons, not least among which was that it was a really cool name I'd discovered years ago, and just wanted to use for something. Today it changes.

I settled on this name for the cigar because the person it was named for enchanted me, and I used the theme of the eyes because those did as well. But I was always a bit uncomfortable about what subsequent line extensions would be called, and could never quite pull the whole theme together, despite my best efforts. My rather crude attempts to express this with the band drew criticism in the marketplace.... and I listened.

A few weeks ago an opportunity presented itself to rethink the whole line, and in the end this proved to be a blessing, as the new name fits magically.

The new name is La Musa by Emilio Cigars. Why? Because much as the muses were inspirational to the ancient Greeks  the person to whom this line of cigars is dedicated inspires me in a multitude of ways.

The blend remains the same. The factory remains the same.

Beyond that, there are a whole array of reasons I could give as to why this happened, but those really don't matter. What matters most is that this line of cigars continues to exist, and serve the purpose for which it was intended ; to be an exquisite representation of the art of cigar making, and to enable a lovely young friend to achieve her dreams.

The box shape will remain unchanged, but we've added a few things to give it more eye appeal. The new band has a Greek theme in keeping with the origin of the muses. The original Grimalkin cigar will now be known simply as "La Musa."  The additional 3 forthcoming blends in this line, all produced in the same factory, will be named after the 3 Plutarchian muses - Melete, Aoide, and Mneme.  The first of these will be released at IPCPR this summer.

As to why this was necessary at all I know there has been a lot of speculation, and none of that really matters because I've decided to make this change, and it's not a debatable subject.

OK life, throw me another curve ball. I've always got the bat in my hand, and I'm ready to swing for the fences again.