GTO, Caraballo Collaborate for Insomnia

Dr. Oscar Rodriguez is one of a handful of cigar brand owners who also have a medical background. In Rodriguez’s case, he’s an emergency room physician, and a side effect of his work in the ER serves as the inspiration for his latest release.

That new cigar is the GTO Insomnia, which is actually a collaboration between Rodriguez’s GTO Cigars and Mario Caraballo of Casa Caraballo. As for the cigar, the GTO Insomnia is a 6 x 52 toro that uses a habano oscuro wrapper from Condega, Nicaragua over a Sumatra-seed binder from Indonesia and fillers from the Condega, Estelí and Jalapa regions of Nicaragua.

Each cigar has an MSRP of $12 and it comes in boxes of 10. The cigar is being sold by GTO Cigars.

While most of the GTO Cigars are made in Rodriguez’s home country of the Dominican Republic, this cigar is made at Pepito Gomez Tobacco Co., a factory in Nicaragua that Casa Caraballo uses.

“As a doctor, I have spent countless hours on my feet, responding to crises and making life-saving decisions,” said Rodriguez in a press release. “Now, with Insomnia, I have created a cigar that embodies the endurance and grit needed to push through those exhausting shifts, providing a tantalizing calm that relishes in sweet sublime, renews profound thinking, and restores order to thought. For this task, I teamed up with a lifelong friend and fellow veteran, Mario Caraballo of Casa Caraballo Cigars, to collaborate on this incredible journey. Together, we crafted a rich, smooth, deep, and complex flavor profile—one that’s as bold as the shifts that inspired it and one that I could live with. It’s a wonderful cigar made for those who work late, think late, and savor the moments of peace that come when the world around them is still.”

Rodriguez is depicted on the packaging.

Charlie Minato

I am an editor and co-founder of halfwheel.com/Rueda Media, LLC. I previously co-founded and published TheCigarFeed, one of the two predecessors of halfwheel. I have written about the cigar industry for more than a decade, covering everything from product launches to regulation to M&A. In addition, I handle a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff here at halfwheel. I enjoy playing tennis, watching boxing, falling asleep to the Le Mans 24, wearing sweatshirts year-round and eating gyros. echte liebe.