An unranked editorial retrospective of lines available by 2022, informed by manufacturer accounts. These selections are not historical award results or firsthand tasting notes from cigars produced that year.
Collaboration takes several forms in 2022. Blackened M81 brings music, whiskey making and cigar production into one project; Allegiance connects E.P. Carrillo’s blending work with Oliva’s Nicaraguan manufacturing. New World Dorado and Olmec add distinct growing and wrapper stories. Our picks for the best cigars of 2022 look at what each relationship contributes, following the people on the band into the farms, factories and leaf choices that give their ideas a finished form.
Blackened M81 by Drew Estate
James Hetfield, Rob Dietrich and Jonathan Drew came together for Blackened M81, which debuted in 2022. Drew Estate presents the original expression around a maduro focus. The varied creative backgrounds supply the project’s human story, while that specific direction gives the collaboration a clear subject in the cigar itself.
AJ Fernandez New World Dorado
Dorado puts a named AJ Fernandez farm in Nicaragua at the center of a New World expression. The agricultural connection gives the family another direction beyond the original Oscuro. A broad exploration theme becomes more local here, drawing attention to a particular growing place within the maker’s own tobacco story.
E.P. Carrillo Allegiance
Allegiance joins E.P. Carrillo to Oliva manufacturing in Nicaragua through Ecuadorian Sumatra wrapper and Nicaraguan binder and filler. The partnership changes the production setting from Carrillo’s Dominican-made lines. Its name has a concrete relationship behind it, connecting a brand’s blending direction with another maker’s factory experience.
Foundation Olmec Maduro
Mexican San Andrés wrapper gives Olmec Maduro a clear agricultural center around Nicaraguan tobaccos. Foundation adds a cultural reference through the name, while the chosen leaf gives the expression its tangible foundation. The Maduro version carries that combination into a separate cigar within the Olmec family.
Undercrown 10
Undercrown 10 brings Drew Estate’s recent line anniversary beside its new Blackened collaboration. Mexican wrapper, Connecticut Broadleaf binder and Nicaraguan filler distinguish the standard anniversary blend. The shared manufacturer leads to separate creative histories, with this cigar growing from a decade of the factory-centered Undercrown family.
Plasencia Cosecha 149
Cosecha 149 connects Plasencia’s Honduran tobacco to the family’s 149th harvest. The agricultural sequence gives the number its meaning, with the 2021 market arrival coming later in the story. It adds a growing family’s record of time to a year whose newer cigars often begin with partnerships and particular farms.
Rocky Patel Sixty
Sixty marks Rocky Patel’s birthday through Mexican San Andrés wrapper and Nicaraguan binder and filler, with additional aging after rolling. Beside Olmec Maduro, the shared wrapper origin opens a useful comparison. Different makers and preparation choices carry that leaf into separate expressions.
La Aroma de Cuba Pasión
Pasión begins with shade-grown Nicaraguan wrapper from Namanji and continues through Garcia manufacturing. The specific growing source gives this La Aroma de Cuba line a close agricultural focus. Alongside Dorado, it shows how much more a farm-level detail can tell us once the country of origin is already known.
J.C. Newman The American
The American connects American tobacco with hand production at J.C. Newman’s El Reloj factory in Tampa. Its story draws leaf and manufacturing into the same national setting. In a year of collaborations across organizations, it offers a particularly direct relationship between the material, the place and the people making the cigar.
Plasencia Alma del Fuego
Ometepe island remains central to Alma del Fuego’s Plasencia expression. The regional emphasis brings another Nicaraguan growing story beside Dorado and Pasión. Each narrows the map in a different way, revealing individual sources of tobacco within a country that can otherwise be treated too broadly.
Looking back at 2022
A partnership becomes meaningful through what the partners make together. In 2022, the clearest stories connect names to manufacturing choices and growing locations to particular leaves. These ten selections follow those connections, giving collaboration substance beyond the signatures on the box.
Brand background, where linked, lives on Ashologist™ — The Study of Cigars.