Casa Carrillo will make 1,500 boxes of the Perez-Carrillo Encore Noir II. Ten cigars to a box, every box individually numbered, one vitola, no second run.

That's the entire product. The Premium Cigar Association published the details on July 22, 2026: an all-Nicaraguan blend in a 6 1/8 x 50 toro the company calls the Celestial No. 2, rolled at Casa Carrillo's factory in Santiago, Dominican Republic, under a Nicaraguan wrapper that the company says was naturally bale-aged for more than five years before production.

It's an international exclusive. According to the PCA, the cigar's only US debut is a special event at Two Guys Smoke Shop in New Hampshire, with Ernesto Perez-Carrillo and Ernesto Perez-Carrillo III scheduled to attend. The dispatch doesn't print a calendar date, only "the Saturday event." Posted on a Wednesday, that Saturday is July 25, 2026.

What interests me here isn't the cigar. It's the 1,500.

The number was decided about five years before the announcement

The operative sentence in the PCA's July 22 item is this one: "Encore Noir II will remain an extremely limited release because of the availability of its aged wrapper tobacco."

Read it twice. The run isn't small because somebody at a conference table decided scarcity moves boxes. It's small because there was only ever so much of that particular wrapper, and there was only so much of it because a buyer put it into bales around 2020 and walked away.

That's a supply constraint wearing a scarcity badge. On a press release the two look identical, and they aren't the same thing at all. One is a decision a company made this year and could unmake next year. The other is arithmetic that finished running before the blend existed.

I keep a weekly roundup called The weekly Cigar Industry Brief, and the single most common thing I strike out of a draft is a production number presented as a creative choice when it's really an inventory report. Limited editions get written about as if the brand picked the figure the way a novelist picks a chapter count. Most of the time the leaf picked it.

How a bale-aged limited edition actually gets sized

The sequence runs in one direction, and the announcement is the last step rather than the first. Working forward:

  1. The leaf gets baled and the quantity is fixed. A quantity of cured wrapper goes into bales in a given year. Whatever went in is what there will ever be of that specific lot, at that specific age, from that specific priming.
  2. It sits, and sitting can't be rushed. Bale-aging is slow fermentation under the weight of the stack. Five years means five calendar years. There's no accelerated version that produces a leaf you can honestly label as bale-aged for five years, which is why the claim is worth something when a company will stand behind it in writing.
  3. The yield comes out lower than the input. Wrapper is the least forgiving part of the plant to store, because it has to survive intact and cosmetically clean. Torn, spotted or brittle leaf gets pulled. The pile that emerges is smaller than the pile that went in, and nobody knows the exact figure until it's opened.
  4. The blend is built to fit the yield. Once the usable wrapper count is known, the vitola choice follows. A 6 1/8 x 50 toro takes more wrapper per cigar than a corona would, so choosing a single toro is itself a decision about how many cigars the lot can support.
  5. The number gets announced. By the time a figure like 1,500 boxes reaches a press release, it has been true for months. The announcement doesn't set it. It reports it.

Which is why a single-size release is a tell worth reading. When a limited edition ships in one vitola only, as this one does, it's usually because the lot couldn't stretch across three sizes and the company decided against thinning it. Casa Carrillo hasn't said that in so many words. But a 1,500-box run in one toro is a shape that fits a finite pile of leaf far better than it fits a marketing calendar.

Where most limited editions go wrong

The failure mode isn't the first run. It's the second one.

A brand announces a numbered edition, the boxes clear, and then a quiet follow-up appears eighteen months later with the same name and a new number. Sometimes that's legitimate, because a second lot of comparable leaf genuinely existed. Sometimes it's the same cigar with the scarcity story recycled, and the collector who paid a premium on the first run finds out the hard way.

How is a reader supposed to tell those two apart before buying? By whether the company names the constraint instead of just naming the number, and on that test this release does better than most.

The honest version of this release has a built-in defense against that. If the constraint really is a finite quantity of wrapper baled around 2020, then there physically cannot be a comparable second run until another lot reaches the same age. That's a checkable promise, and it's the reason I take the wrapper-availability sentence more seriously than I'd take a plain "limited to 1,500" with no explanation attached.

Aged tobacco also gets oversold generally, and it's the one specification a consumer can never verify at the shop counter. You can measure a ring gauge. You can read a country of origin off a box stamp. You cannot look at a rolled cigar and confirm that its wrapper spent 2021 through 2025 in a bale rather than eighteen months in a warehouse. It's the maker's word or nothing, and that's fine as long as the sentence says so. Attribute it or cut it.

Storage undoes the whole thing anyway, and I've done it to myself. I bought a box of Encore in 2024, moved five sticks into a travel humidor I hadn't recharged, and forgot about them. I lit one from that box on January 12, 2026, after 3 weeks in that dry case, and it was plugged from the first inch, wouldn't draw past a whisper, and tasted harsh where the same cigar had been sweet in December. Five years of bale-aging is no defense against three weeks of neglect. If you store a box at the wrong humidity, none of that aging survives the trip, and those are the practical limits on what an aging claim buys a buyer.

All-Nicaraguan, which says less than it sounds

The blend detail getting the most attention is that Encore Noir II is a Nicaraguan puro, wrapper included, where the original Encore Noir used an Ecuadorian wrapper. That's a real change in the blend. It's a much smaller change in context.

Nicaragua supplies the overwhelming majority of what Americans smoke. In the Cigar Association of America's import report covering January through March 2025, premium large cigar imports totaled 93.264 million units, of which Nicaragua accounted for 59.703 million, up 8.9 percent year over year. The Dominican Republic sent 16.945 million (down 3.1 percent) and Honduras 15.347 million (up 10.8 percent), per the same CAA report.

So an all-Nicaraguan blend isn't a bold sourcing statement in 2026. It's the mainstream. What's less common is the split this cigar embodies: Nicaraguan filler, binder and wrapper, assembled in the Dominican Republic. Casa Carrillo's own site places production at Tabacalera La Alianza in Santiago, where Ernesto Perez-Carrillo oversees the floor. If you want the longer version of why the leaf and the labor keep landing in different countries, I wrote about the gap between where cigars are rolled and where the wrapper is actually grown earlier this week.

For readers who'd rather buy something they can hold this weekend than chase an allocation, the equivalent shelf at retail is broad. There were 89 Nicaraguan-origin listings live on the Nicaragua origin page when I checked it on July 24, 2026, and the discount-house limited-edition shelf carried two, which is roughly the ratio you'd expect. Numbered editions don't reach clearance channels often, and when they do it's usually because the number was never the point.

What Casa Carrillo didn't publish

No price.

The PCA item carries no MSRP for Encore Noir II, per cigar or per box. And as of this morning, the company's own newsroom index at casacarrillocigars.com doesn't carry an Encore Noir II post at all. The most recent entries there are the 2026 Pledge of Allegiance, Ascend, Pledge Purple, the TAA release, Battleborn, an Endure corona gorda, La Historia Silk and an Encore Black size extension. The company has a working press page and this release isn't on it.

That omission is sharper than it looks, because the same dispatch prices the other product in it down to the cent.

According to the PCA, Ascend is a regular-production line in the Perez-Carrillo Series and is now shipping to retailers nationwide. Three sizes, all with published MSRPs: Saddle at 5 x 50 for $12.75, Ridge at 6 x 52 for $13.75, and Peak at 6 1/4 x 58 for $14.95, per the same July 22 dispatch [PCA, July 22, 2026].

A company that publishes three prices for the everyday line and none for the limited one has made a choice.

There is a per-cigar figure circulating in the enthusiast press. I'm not printing it, because I can't source it to Casa Carrillo, to the PCA, or to anyone who'd put a name on it. If a company won't respond, the article says so, by name, and this is the version of that rule for a company that simply hasn't said. Casa Carrillo hasn't published a price for the Encore Noir II. When it does, the number goes in.

Ernesto Perez-Carrillo is on the record about the tobacco, at least. "By allowing these tobaccos the time they needed to mature naturally, we've created a cigar with remarkable depth, richness, and elegance that remains unmistakably Encore," he said in the announcement carried by the PCA. That's a blender describing his own work, quoted as such, and it isn't a substitute for a spec sheet.

The Encore line has history behind the claim. Per the PCA's write-up, Encore Noir II follows the original Encore Noir and expands on the Encore blend, which took the 2018 cigar-of-the-year honor from the category's largest consumer magazine. That award belongs to a publication we don't cite as a source, so take it as the PCA reports it: context for why this particular line gets a limited edition at all.

The rename is still working itself out

Worth remembering which company this is. E.P. Carrillo renamed itself Casa Carrillo, and epcarrillo.com now redirects to casacarrillocigars.com. The Perez-Carrillo name survives as the reserved premium tier. The company's own series page states it plainly: "Only these cigars are allowed to bear the name Perez-Carrillo and each vitola is an homage to someone within the family."

So the badge on this box is doing real work. Encore Noir II is a Perez-Carrillo release, not a Casa Carrillo one, which puts it in the same tier as Pledge, Deep Blue, La Historia, Allegiance and Endure rather than alongside Essence or INCH. I covered the first limited edition to ship under the new house name in the Deep Blue piece back on July 18, and the reporting problem there was the mirror image of this one. Deep Blue had a published price and no verifiable box count. Encore Noir II has a verified box count and no published price.

Neither gap is scandalous. Both are the kind of thing that gets smoothed over when a release writeup is assembled from a single email. Most trade publications recycle press releases verbatim and call it journalism, and the tell is that the missing fields get quietly filled in from somewhere else, unattributed, and then repeated until they look official.

I've been on the wrong side of that. In late 2024 I ran a story about a Padron reformulation rumor sourced to one anonymous person who claimed inside access, and pulled it about six hours later when it turned out the source was a competitor. Nobody caught it but me, which is worse, not better. The lesson wasn't "be careful with rumors." It was that an unverified number or claim doesn't become true by being repeated, and my byline is the only thing standing between the two.

What to watch

Three things, and none of them will be settled this weekend.

First, whether the release appears on Casa Carrillo's own newsroom with a price attached. A company that lists eight other 2026 releases there and skips this one is either still finalizing something or leaving distribution to handle it. (Either answer is informative, and the page is free to check.)

Second, whether a US allocation follows the New Hampshire event. "International exclusive" with a single domestic launch is an unusual shape, and it's the sort of arrangement that either stays exclusive or quietly doesn't. Boxes are numbered, so the ceiling is at least verifiable in a way most limited editions aren't.

Third, the Encore Black Bulwarks, which Casa Carrillo says debuts July 26 in Pontiac, Michigan with limited initial availability and larger shipments later. That announcement, on the company's own site, carries no blend spec, no dimensions and no MSRP either. Two Encore-family releases in one week and neither comes with a price. Is that a pattern or a small marketing department in a busy month? I don't know yet, and I'd rather say so than guess in print.

Every claim above carries a date and a source, which is the whole reason the price is missing from this article rather than estimated into it. The one number everyone actually wants is the one nobody has published. Ask me again after Saturday.

Disclosure: when we link to a specific product, we link to a retailer our writers think charges a fair price for it. Casa Carrillo isn't stocked at that retailer, so nothing here is a listing for the Encore Noir II. For readers hunting comparable numbered releases at a discount, the two live limited editions at the time of writing were the Oliva Serie V 135th Anniversary Edicion at $88.24 a box and the Romeo y Julieta Vintage Corona Tubo at $95.94 [current retail, July 24, 2026]. Nicaraguan toros in the same size class are easier to find, including the Diesel Grind Toro at $99.74. The new-arrivals page and the brand directory are where restocks surface first.

Sources & Notes

  1. Premium Cigar Association, "Casa Carrillo Ships Ascend, Unveils Limited Encore Noir II," published July 22, 2026 - source for the 1,500-box production figure, the 10-count numbered boxes, the 6 1/8 x 50 Celestial No. 2 vitola, the all-Nicaraguan blend, the five-plus-year bale-aging claim, the Ernesto Perez-Carrillo quote, the Two Guys Smoke Shop launch, and the three Ascend MSRPs: premiumcigars.org
  2. Casa Carrillo, "The Perez-Carrillo Series" - source for the reserved-name policy quote and for Tabacalera La Alianza in Santiago, Dominican Republic as the factory: casacarrillocigars.com
  3. Casa Carrillo news and press index - checked July 24, 2026 for an Encore Noir II announcement; the eight most recent entries are listed in the article and none of them is this release: casacarrillocigars.com/news-and-press
  4. Casa Carrillo, "Casa Carrillo Expands Encore Black With New Size" - source for the July 26 Pontiac, Michigan debut of Encore Black Bulwarks and the limited initial availability: casacarrillocigars.com
  5. Cigar Association of America, 2025 year-to-date cigar import report - source for the January through March 2025 premium large cigar import totals by country: cigarsusa.org