CRAFT
“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” - Ernest Hemingway
Every portfolio needs a place where the exploration never ends. CRAFT is that place.
Introduced in 2013, CRAFT has always operated by a different set of rules than the rest of the RoMa Craft Tobac portfolio. Where every other brand is defined by a fixed blend, a fixed story, and a fixed identity, CRAFT has no fixed blend at all. Each release is a distinct expression, different tobaccos, different growing regions, different construction, a different vitola entirely, unified by a single purpose: to demonstrate what the rollers of Fábrica de Tabacos Nica Sueño are capable of doing when the brief is simply to make something that has never existed before.
The original 2013 release announced the brand’s ambitions immediately, a tobaqueado rolled figurado with stripes pressed into the foot using different tobacco varietals. In 2014, it was the La Campaña de Panamá Soberana WitchCraft, an inside-out inversion of the first blend that reversed the wrapper and binder roles entirely. The series went quiet again before returning in 2018, and from 2019 through 2022 it shipped annually, each year a different vitola, a different set of wrapper combinations, a different argument for what the brand could be.
In 2023 the concept expanded with the launch of the CRAFT Maquette sub-series, quarterly limited releases in plain kraft paper bundles, each one a window into a blend still in development. The first Maquette, Il Nonno, was a Riverside Cigar exclusive celebrating the birth of Skip Martin’s first grandchild. What followed was a run of releases that defined the series: El Marinero, Steel Porcupine, Mon Chéri, Foreign & Domestic, each a different tobacco, a different idea, a different question about what the next permanent brand might become.
The final Maquette release of 2024, La Maestranza, answered the question decisively: halfwheel named it the number one cigar of the year, the industry’s highest recognition going to a product with no advertising, no broad distribution, and no promotional program of any kind. Nica Sueño tied for halfwheel’s Factory of the Year in the same cycle.
CRAFT 2026, the first non-Maquette release since 2022, is a 5 x 60 gordo drawing on nine tobacco varietals from six countries, each 10-count box containing ten differently constructed cigars. The blend remains undisclosed. That has always been the posture.
CRAFT is the apex of the RoMa Craft portfolio architecture. Intemperance opens the door. CroMagnon and Neanderthal deepen the commitment. Maestranza celebrates the people that make the products our retail partners share with their customers. CRAFT is what the relationship becomes when it has been built over years and tested through every tier beneath it. It is not offered. It is earned. And because it is earned, it means something to everyone who holds it.