Red Meat Lovers Fritanga Heads to Stores

The newest size in Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust’s Red Meat Lovers line is on its way to stores. It’s a 6 x 52 box-pressed toro called Fritanga, named for a style of Nicaraguan street food centered around grilling meat on an open flame.

The Red Meat Lovers line, which debuted in 2019, was created to be paired with beef dishes, and was released as a collaboration between Smoke Inn, Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust and the Red Meat Lovers Club, an organization that gathers for meat-centric events with a charitable aim. It has a blend that uses a Connecticut broadleaf wrapper, a Mexican San Andrés negro binder, and fillers from Nicaragua and Pennsylvania. Steve Saka, founder and blender of Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust, calls this newest size a spicier and beefier iteration of the Red Meat Lovers blend, which is produced at Nicaragua American Cigars S.A.

Pricing is set at $16.25 per cigar and $162.50 for a box of 10 cigars. The Fritanga is a regular production size and joins the other three sizes in the line:

• Red Meat Lovers Beef Stick (6 x 48)
• Red Meat Lovers Filet Mignon (5 x 54)
• Red Meat Lovers Ribeye (6 x 52)
• Red Meat Lovers Porterhouse (6 x 60)

The Fritanga size made its first appearance at the Red Meat Lovers dinner on March 14, 2025, which is part of The Great Smoke, an event put on by Smoke Inn, a retailer with multiple locations in South Florida.

Patrick Lagreid

I strive to capture the essence of a cigar and the people behind them in my work – every cigar you light up is the culmination of the work of countless people and often represents generations of struggle and stories. For me, it’s about so much more than the cigar – it’s about the story behind it, the experience of enjoying the work of artisans and the way that a good cigar can bring people together. In addition to my work with halfwheel, I’m the public address announcer for the Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks during spring training, as well as for the Salt River Rafters of the Arizona Fall League, the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury and the G-League’s Valley Suns. I was previously the Arizona Rattlers of the Indoor Football League, and Goodyear Ballpark, spring training home of the Cincinnati Reds and Cleveland Guardians. I also work in a number of roles for Major League Baseball, plus I’m a voiceover artist. Prior to joining halfwheel, I covered the Phoenix and national cigar scene for Examiner.com, and was an editor for Cigar Snob magazine.