Crowned Heads

Crowned Heads was formed in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2011 by Jon Huber and colleagues who had worked at CAO before that company was absorbed into General Cigar. The founders chose not to build a factory, instead commissioning blends from established manufacturers, and the company has become one of the clearer examples of a brand whose asset is editorial judgement and marketing rather than production capacity.

The debut line, Four Kicks, was made at Ernesto Perez-Carrillo's Dominican factory; later lines have come from My Father in Esteli, from the Nica Sueno factory operated by RoMa Craft and from other Nicaraguan houses. Las Calaveras, an annual limited edition released each spring, is the company's most closely followed programme. Releases are typically produced in defined quantities rather than as open-ended core lines.

The catalogue also includes Le Careme, Jericho Hill, Juarez, La Imperiosa, Headley Grange and Mil Dias. Because the ownership and factory assignments of individual lines have changed over time and are not consistently documented in one place, this record is marked reported. The absence of a factory is the defining structural fact about the company: it competes on blending direction, packaging and release timing rather than on manufacturing capacity.