Size: 6 1/2 x 60
Country: Nicaragua
Wrapper: Ecuadorian Habano
"The “Unicorn” is a pet project of mine gone awry. It was predicated on my disappointing experiences with dozens of individual “uber-rare”, “absolute best in the world”, and “sell your soul to get” cigars with price tags ranging from $100.00 to $3000.00 over the years. IMO, the vast majority of these cigars were just marketing gimmicks and even worse, many of them just plain sucked. Not only unworthy of their price tags, but not even worth my smoking.
So, it got me thinking: “What if I went whole hog crazy and did everything to the Nth degree on the cigar itself?” Meaning no gold leaf, bazillion dollar alcohol infusion, humidor quality box, or celebrity endorsement, but rather just focused on the tobacco and cigar itself. What could I possibly spend to make such a cigar? And would those costs justify the result?
First things first, I desired it to have a beautiful, one of a kind shape. I wanted to make a perfecto like those I saw in the cartoons of yesteryear, while also being truly unique. So, I bought a lathe and all the sharp tools required and handcrafted the very first one myself out of hardwood to serve as the prototype from which 24 custom molds were created. The fact that I have retained all ten fingers and my eyesight is a miracle – trust me, it was scary in the beginning!
Being such a “broadleaf whore”, I knew I wanted my Unicorn to be made with my favorite capa, but at the same time I wanted it to be a sophisticated cigar. Now “a sophisticated broadleaf cigar” is an oxymoron, so I really had my work cut out for me. It forced us to scour dozens of broadleaf pilons to find most finely textured wrapper leaf with stellar color, flavor and burn. Also, I wanted to utilize the finest of Nicaraguan tripas: only the fleshiest, most oily of leaf that had been cured and fermented to perfection from the very best harvests of the past 7 years. This unreasonable quest had us hand sorting over 6,000lbs of Grade A+ leaf to ultimately select less than 2% for use within this liga. These puros are crafted with the absolute best curated tobaccos in the world, bar none.
Now add in the most tedious and intricate bunching techniques required to accommodate this 7- tobacco perfecto’s recipe, the single best torcedor in all of Nicaragua to execute this challenging vitola coupled with exhaustive quality standards and, “Voilà! You have the Unicorn!”
The cost and task proved to be beyond absurd, and in all sincerity, while the results are spectacular and the cigar is priced in scale with the expense and labor invested, I find it hard to justify the reasoning for making something so difficult, costly and rare to just light ablaze.
That being said, I am extremely proud of the immense effort and talent we invested into crafting only 1,000 of these unparalleled works of arts. The Muestra de Saka Unicorn is arguably one of the rarest and finest production cigar on the planet without exception." – Steve Saka
