Dunbarton StillWell Star Bayou No. 32

The Dunbarton StillWell Star Bayou No. 32 is the most distinctly American expression in Steve Saka and Jeremy Reeves's StillWell Star collaboration. Where the English No. 27 draws on Old World Latakia and Oriental tobaccos, Bayou No. 32 celebrates Louisiana's most famous contribution to pipe tobacco: St. James Parish Perique.

Perique is one of the rarest and most idiosyncratic tobaccos in the world. Grown only in the St. James Parish area of Louisiana, it undergoes a unique pressure-fermentation process where the leaf is packed tightly into used whiskey barrels and left to transform over months. The result is a tobacco with a concentrated dark fruit, fig, and prune character, with an unusual peppery spice that reads nothing like the pepper in Nicaraguan or Honduran cigars. Production is extremely limited, which is why Perique appears almost exclusively in pipe tobacco blends.

In Bayou No. 32, Perique is combined with Bright Virginia and Red Virginia pipe leaf and folded into Nicaraguan long-filler cigar tobacco, all wrapped in Ecuadorian Habano over a San Andrés Negro binder at Joya de Nicaragua. The Virginia tobaccos provide a clean, slightly sweet and grassy platform that amplifies Perique's dark fruit character without competing with it. The Nicaraguan cigar leaf brings body and structure that neither Perique nor Virginia could provide alone.

The resulting profile is unlike any other premium cigar on the market: sweet, fruit-forward, with an unusual spice note from the Perique and a medium strength level that keeps the experience accessible. Bayou No. 32 is best appreciated by smokers with an open curiosity about tobacco's range — whether they come from a cigar background or a pipe tobacco background. Compare the StillWell Star concept to traditional Nicaraguan blends in our regional guide, and explore how the Ecuadorian Habano wrapper shapes the frame in our cigar wrapper overview. Track your cross-tobacco explorations on Casa DNC.