RoMa Craft Tobac
Launched in 2012 by Michael Rosales and Skip Martin, producing at its own small Esteli factory, Fabrica de Tabacos Nica Sueno.
RoMa Craft Tobac was announced in January 2012, formed by merging Michael Rosales's Costa Rican Imports with Skip Martin's Galveston Bay Tobacco. The company name is a contraction of the two founders' surnames. Its first brand, CroMagnon, had already appeared on more than a dozen best-of-year lists before the combined company existed, which gave the venture unusual momentum for a start-up.
Production is handled at Fabrica de Tabacos Nica Sueno in Esteli, a deliberately small facility that the partners also use to make cigars for other brands. The house style favours dark, dense blends: CroMagnon uses Connecticut broadleaf, Aquitaine an Ecuadorian habano ligero wrapper, and Neanderthal is built around especially heavy priming leaf. Output is small relative to the larger Esteli plants that surround it, and the partners have kept it that way deliberately.
The Intemperance families, named for the American temperance movement, cover lighter and mid-strength blends. RoMa Craft has remained independent and small by design, with distribution concentrated among specialist retailers in the United States and Europe. The company has issued limited and retailer-exclusive releases in greater numbers than most makers of its size, which has helped sustain attention on a deliberately small core range.