Cuban Cigars

An incident in the history of US international affairs gives us a sense of the prestige which surrounds the Cuban cigar. On February 7, 1962, former President John F. Kennedy imposed a trade embargo on Cuba as a sanction on Fidel Castro's recently proclaimed socialist government. A preliminary maneuver, however, was necessary: the previous evening, Kennedy instructed his press secretary Pierre Salinger to purchase 1,200 petit corona Cuban cigars. Following Salinger's - and the cigars'- safe arrival on US soil, Kennedy officially put the embargo into effect.

Kennedy, to be sure, is not the only political (or renowned) figure to have held the Cuban cigar in such esteem. Before giving up smoking as part of a Cuban health campaign to discourage the habit in the population, Fidel Castro himself was oft seen puffing on an habano in the early days of the revolution (the cigar appears in the photographic narrative of the revolution so much, in fact, that one might consider it as much an emblem of the latter as the guerrillas' beards), and the list of addicts goes from Mark Twain to Winston Churchill.

Why the Cuban cigar's unsurpassed reputation? Four factors may be said to account, at least, for its unique quality: the characteristics of Cuban soil (that of the Vuelta Abajo district in the Pinar del Río Province at the west of the island, is said to favor tobacco growing particularly), the variety of Cuban tobaccos, the island's climate and the wisdom of Cuban peasants and cigar rollers (or torcedores). You can probably savour an imported habano anywhere in the world - save, perhaps, in the United States, where embargo regulations prohibit the purchase of tobacco from Cuba and astronomical fines for smoking a Cuban cigar apply - but, for the true cigar lover, traveling to Cuba is generally an indispensable experience, a moment which forever changes their perception of the pleasures of lighting up and smoking a puro. For centuries, even before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the New World, the inhabitants of Cuba have grown and consumed tobacco (a ceramic vessel discovered at Mayan archaeological site shows that the inhabitants of the Caribbean islands have smoked cigars since the 10th century), and they are more than pleased to reveal to inexperienced travelers the unimaginable series of meticulous actions which make up the complex process of manufacturing a cigar.

Cuba produces and sells more than 20 well-known cigar brands. The most renowned include Partagás, Romeo y Julieta, Montecristi, Vegas Robaina and the ultra-famous Cohiba (a brand actually created by Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara). Interestingly, the world's most expensive cigar is a variety of the Cohiba brand (the Cohiba Behike). A box of these cigars is sold at 16 thousand dollars.