Visigoth

On the night of August 24, 410 AD, the Salarian Gate of Rome was opened from the inside and the Visigoths entered the city. What they did not do was destroy the Christian churches, the churches bearing the Chi Rho. The mark on every band in this portfolio. The Visigoths were not savages. They were Arian Christians who had served Rome as foederati for decades. Their king, Alaric, Alarīks in Gothic, meaning ruler of all, had fought for Theodosius at the Battle of the Frigidus in 394, losing half his men for an empire that then denied him the rank he had earned. What he wanted was not destruction. It was recognition within the civilization he had bled for. Emperor Honorius refused every negotiation. From the safety of Ravenna. The sack was the consequence of a broken contract.

The Visigoths did not erase Rome. They preserved it, adapted it, and handed it to the medieval world. Their successors wrote the Codex Euricianus, the first Germanic legal code, built on Roman foundations. They are the hinge between antiquity and everything that followed. The font chosen for the Visigoth brand, medieval Germanic blackletter, is the typography of the civilization they built after Rome.

When Visigoth releases, the Chi Rho will appear on its band alongside the name of the people who took the city it came from, and protected what that city stood for when they did. The consumer who encounters it without context will find a well-made cigar with an interesting historical reference. The person who has followed the full portfolio, who traced the mark, understood that RoMa means Rome, followed the argument running underneath all twelve brands, will understand, without being told, that the circle has closed.

Not because it was explained to them. Because they did the work.

Visigoth features a dark Ecuadorian Sumatra wrapper and a Besuki binder from Indonesia. The filler includes criollo and corojo fillers from the Jamastran Valley in Honduras and a corojo from the Jalapa Valley in Nicaragua.