Hooten & Young is marking the anniversary of the Battle of Mogadishu with a cigar that comes braided.
The Jacksonville Beach, Florida company, which was founded by veterans and also makes American whiskey, has announced the Gothic Serpent Culebra. It’s named after Operation Gothic Serpent, the 1993 U.S. military mission in Somalia that included the October 3 and 4 battle later told in the book and film Black Hawk Down. Hooten & Young says its own history is tied to the men who served in that operation, and the cigar arrives during what the company calls Gothic Serpent Month.
If you haven’t seen one before, a culebra (Spanish for “snake”) is three cigars twisted together while the tobacco is still pliable. The format goes back to at least the 1800s, and one popular story says factories used it to separate the cigars handed out to workers from the ones headed for sale. Nobody’s fully settled on where it started, but the habit of splitting one up and passing the cigars around has stuck.
Hooten & Young’s version packs nine cigars into three culebra bundles. Each bundle pairs two barber-pole cigars with one “serpent” cigar, and the set uses Candela, Habano, San Andrés, and Connecticut Shade wrappers, which gives the bundles their green, dark, and natural striping. The cigars are made in Nicaragua by Cordoba & Morales and are rated medium to full in strength. The company didn’t list sizes or the binder and filler tobaccos.
Pricing is set at $75 for the full three-culebra collection, which works out to about $8.33 per cigar. Hooten & Young hasn’t announced a ship date or which retailers will carry it.
Product Details
- Cigar: Hooten & Young Gothic Serpent Culebra
- Configuration: 3 culebra bundles, 9 cigars (2 barber-pole and 1 serpent cigar per bundle)
- Size: Not disclosed
- Wrappers: Candela, Habano, San Andrés, Connecticut Shade
- Binder: Not disclosed
- Filler: Not disclosed
- Strength: Medium to Full
- Country of Origin: Nicaragua
- Factory: Cordoba & Morales
- MSRP: $75.00 per three-culebra collection (about $8.33 per cigar)
- Availability: Not announced
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