There is a moment in the Crowned Heads origin story that says everything about what kind of company this is.
Jon Huber and Mike Conder had spent years building CAO Cigars from inside — Huber as Director of Lifestyle Marketing, Conder as Senior Vice President of Marketing. CAO was a Nashville-based company, one of the more creatively branded houses in the premium segment, and the two of them had helped shape what it was. Then in 2007, Henri Wintermans Cigars acquired CAO. Then Scandinavian Tobacco Group acquired Henri Wintermans. And somewhere in the transition from private company to European conglomerate, the decision was made to relocate CAO operations from Nashville to Richmond, Virginia.
Huber and Conder opted out.
That’s the moment. Two people deciding that the thing they cared about — making cigars their way, telling stories their way, building something that meant something — was worth more than the stability of staying. They left Nashville’s corporate umbrella to start something smaller, slower, and theirs. In 2011, Crowned Heads was open for business.
What came next was not an overnight success. It was something more interesting than that.
A Name from a Yellow Brick Road
Jon Huber found the name in a movie.
On Professor Marvel’s wagon in The Wizard of Oz, hand-painted in carnival lettering: “Professor Marvel — Acclaimed By — The Crowned Heads of Europe — Past, Present and Future.” Huber saw in that phrase exactly the kind of aspiration he was chasing — not corporate, not mass-market, but something with personality, history, and a story beneath the surface. The kind of brand that rewards people who look closer.
That instinct — build something that rewards looking closer — is the consistent thread through everything Crowned Heads has done since.
Four Kicks and the Beginning
The first cigar Crowned Heads released was Four Kicks, in 2011. The name came from a Kings of Leon song: a piece of Southern rock with the kind of attitude that fits a boutique cigar brand perfectly. Loud in the right way. Not aggressive for its own sake.
The blend itself was built to match. An Ecuadorian Habano wrapper over Nicaraguan binder and filler, medium to full in body, with a flavor profile that leans into cedar, leather, and pepper in the opening third before developing into creaminess and nut. It was a statement cigar, designed to arrive fully-formed — proof of concept in ring gauge form.
Four Kicks found its audience quickly. And in a market flooded with new brands trying to cut through, that was a signal worth paying attention to.
The Lineup: Music, Mythology, and Maduro
What Crowned Heads built over the following years is a portfolio that operates more like a record collection than a cigar catalog. Every line has a story. Every name is a reference to something. They are asking you to get curious.
Headley Grange arrived in 2012, a collaboration with Ernesto Perez-Carrillo Jr. at Tabacalera La Alianza in the Dominican Republic. The name came from the English country house where Led Zeppelin set up a recording truck in the 1970s and cut “When the Levee Breaks.” Jon Huber wanted the cigar to carry the weight of that drum sound — unmistakable, physical, the kind of thing you feel before you understand it. Ecuadorian Sumatra wrapper, Nicaraguan core, medium to full in strength. Reviewers have described it as creamy, balanced, and powerful in the final third, with notes of cedar, espresso, and caramel. It is, by most accounts, a serious cigar for someone who wants to sit down and pay attention.
Jericho Hill came in 2014, manufactured by the Garcia family at My Father Cigars in Estelí, Nicaragua. The inspiration this time was Johnny Cash — specifically “Cocaine Blues,” a Cash song with a particular darkness running through it. The cigar matches the reference: a dark, oily San Andrés Maduro wrapper over a Nicaraguan core, full-bodied, bold, with flavors of cocoa, espresso, leather, and rich earth. It’s not a subtle smoke. It’s not trying to be. Jericho Hill has become one of the most talked-about Crowned Heads releases among enthusiasts who want something with weight.
Las Calaveras is the annual limited release — a different blend each year, released around Día de los Muertos. The series is a tribute: each vintage honors people who have passed, and the packaging reflects that with traditional sugar skull imagery. The blend changes, but the intent stays constant. Las Calaveras has become one of the most anticipated annual releases in the premium boutique segment, which is saying something in a market where “limited edition” has been diluted to near-meaninglessness by brands that use scarcity as a strategy. Crowned Heads uses it as an expression.
The portfolio has grown beyond these four — Mother Church pays tribute to Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, the spiritual home of American country music. Broadway arrived in 2025 as another Nashville touchstone. Each release is anchored to a story. The brand keeps building the record collection.
What Boutique Actually Means
Crowned Heads does not own a factory. This is worth saying plainly, because it clarifies something important about what “boutique” means in the cigar world.
The company partners with Tabacalera La Alianza — Ernesto Perez-Carrillo’s operation in the Dominican Republic — for some of their blends, and with the Garcia family at My Father Cigars in Nicaragua for others. These are two of the most respected cigar-making facilities in the world. When Crowned Heads releases a new line, it is being produced by master rollers with decades of craft behind them. The tobacco is selected, the blends are developed, the quality is maintained — but the factory floor itself belongs to someone else.
What Crowned Heads owns is the story, the vision, and the relationships. Jon Huber has described the company philosophy as “boutique independent” — no titles, no cubicles, no corporate structure for its own sake. The decisions that matter get made by people who care about the outcome of those decisions. That is not a trivial thing in an industry where consolidation has compressed many names into a handful of conglomerates.
Unlike family-owned manufacturers such as Arturo Fuente, who grow their own tobacco on a 1,000-acre Dominican estate and control every step from leaf to finish, Crowned Heads competes on vision and curation. The question isn’t which model is better — it’s which one produces the cigar you want to smoke. Crowned Heads has made the answer clear.
In 2025, a chapter closed: Mike Conder retired after fourteen years of co-building the brand. Tim Ozgener — son of Cano Ozgener, the founder of CAO, the company where Huber and Conder started — acquired Conder’s share and became co-owner alongside Jon Huber. It is a quietly full-circle moment for a brand that began as two people walking away from what CAO had become.
The Enthusiast Community and the Long Game
Crowned Heads has never gone mass-market. This is a choice, and it is why the brand has the community it has.
You don’t stumble across Four Kicks at a gas station. You find Headley Grange at a shop whose owner ordered it specifically because they thought their customers would want it. You wait for Las Calaveras every fall the way you wait for a seasonal album. These are not mass-distribution cigars, and the people who smoke them regularly are not passive consumers. They are the kind of enthusiasts who know where the cigar came from, who made it, what the name means, and why it matters.
That audience is exactly who Jon Huber set out to reach. The “carve your own path” ethos he has described publicly isn’t marketing language — it’s a position statement. Crowned Heads built its community the same way a good band builds a fanbase: by making something they actually believed in and trusting that the right people would find it.
It’s the same playbook we saw Room 101 run with Matt Booth — different aesthetic, same conviction. The boutique brands that last don’t survive by being bigger. They survive by being clearer.
After fifteen years, Crowned Heads has found theirs.
The Read
Crowned Heads is not the biggest name in the boutique tier. They are arguably the most genuinely boutique — a company still operating the way it was designed, still building stories into every release, still manufacturing at partner facilities because that’s how you get the result, not because it’s the cheap option.
If you’ve never smoked a Four Kicks, it’s a good entry point: medium-full, accessible, and a cigar that earns its reputation. If you want something heavier, Jericho Hill will not disappoint. If you want to understand why enthusiasts track annual releases like vinyl drops, wait for Las Calaveras this fall.
The cigars are good. The brand is better.
Crowned Heads cigars are available through authorized independent tobacconists. Allocation varies by release. Las Calaveras drops annually around Día de los Muertos — check with your local shop for availability.