These affordable yet full bodied authentic Cohibas offer an excellent smoke. (Size: 4.5" x 26 Strength: Medium)
Cohiba Double Coronas Only $54.00 each
It will be worthwhile to taste one of these Double Coronas with all the Cohiba Habano exquisiteness and flavor in almost one and a half hours of pleasure. A gift from Cohiba for connoisseurs, which has been produced in extremely reduced quantities.
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The small guy at the front of the expansive room speaks over the antiquated intercom, reading a story from Granma, the official party newspaper of Cuba. His voice crackles through dirty speakers mounted on yellowing walls. Lots of guys and ladies intently listen to his speech as they roll cigars of various sizes and types on the wooden workbenches that line the big room of the first floor of the building. The rollers hit their little metal knives on slabs of wood as they shape and finish cigars. The sound from their chavetas accentuates the tinny sound of the reader's voice and blends with the pungent scent of rich tobacco leaf. This has been the scene of cigar maniufacturing in the Partagas factory for many years. It is here that some of the best cigars of Cuba and Havanna are produced, from the majestic Partagas Lusitania Double Corona to the potently rich Cohiba Robusto. As one of the oldest cigar makers on the island, Partagas represents the splendor and the tradition of the industry better than any other factory. Its large colonial-style facade in cream and brick-red paint is a landmark in central Havana. Large, strong block letters say at the top of the building--"1845 Partagas Real Fabrica de Tabacos"--which loudly testifies that the factory has been making incredible cigars, not cigarettes, for 154 years.
Pilotos' newest factory is one of the 60 cigar operations that are playing an increasingly important role in the country's post-Soviet economy. In the early 1990s, with the fall of the USSR and its support of Cuba's economy, the island plunged into a deep recession. In the span of three years the GDP fell by 40% and the state could not feed its citizens. The problem pushed Castro's regime to ease market controls and introduce dollars into the economy. The state too needed hard currency, and so it turned to the industries that generated the highest revenue in dollars: tourism and export tobacco.
While the price of rough tobacco is about 10 cents per pound, a box of Cuban cigars abroad sells for up to $200. The market is profitable, and Castro understands this: new brands and new sizes of cohiba cigars at different prices are always appearing and every season new workers are brought into the industry.
For a factory at the leading edge of the economy, the Pilotos plant is also a throw back to the great days of socialism. Everyone has a role to play in the creation and all laborers are equally significant. Piñaldo Franco, the director of Pilotos factory explains, "The country is a single entity, the factory is a single entity and it has a single owner: Fidel Castro."
Coronas Especiales and Robustos by Cohiba are the most popular followed by Montecristo, Bolivar and Romeo Y Julieta.
Like most of Pilotos 5000 residents, Orlando Acosta, the factory's production supervisor take pride in his lifetime of working in tobacco. He is a quiet but nice guy with a soft voice and a brown moustache. At the factory, people merely call him Rolando.
"I was born under a tobacco tree," he jokes in the tiny storage room where raw material is given to the rollers. "So I know a bit about tobacco."
On weekends, when he can escape family obligations, Rolando goes to the countryside where he still has a vega, or tobacco field. There, he relaxes and "forgets about work."
During the mid to late 1990's in America, numerous cultural phenomena caused the popularity of cigar smoking to skyrocket. Lavish dinner events, or "smokers", could be attended in virtually any metropolitan area of consequence across the country. Celebrities, radio and television talk-show hosts, politicians, blue-collar workers, and even a large number of women - a fact surprising to some observers, were drawn to the allure of the cigar. The sudden resurgence in cigar smoking created demand that was difficult to supply. Additionally, the significance of America's Cuban trade embargo . imposed some 30 years earlier, before many of the new aficionados were born - suddenly became very evident. Cigar retailers, a good number of them new establishments looking to capitalize on the craze, could name their price on virtually every type and brand of cigar. Some even refused to sell any one customer an entire box at a time, regardless of the fact that only a very few could afford to, as a courtesy to their other customers.
>Going from farming tobacco at the local coop to supervising an industrial factory was no small feat. Rolando and two other cofounders had to learn everything from choosing and stemming tobacco leaves to hand-rolling authentic cohiba tobaccoo cigars and quality control. For 13 months he attended class in Havana and traveled to other factories in Pinar del Rio, the traditional tobacco region where Pilotos is located.
By the time Christopher Columbus discovered Cuba in 1492, the Indian natives had already organized all their rituals around the tobacco tree or "cohiba." They smoked to commune with gods and they ultized the plant as healer to cure skin diseases and cuts. Columbus' crew smoked for pleasure and it didn't take long for them to ship the leaf home. After unsuccessfully trying to outlaw tobacco importing in 1717, the Spanish Crown instead decided to create a monopoly on tobacco's cultivation and commercialization. A 100 years later, Cuban revolutions and problems with mismanagement led to the end of the monopoly and the island managed its own tobacco production. With the creation of the island's first cigar factories, the tobacco industry took center stage in Cuban history. To entertain the rollers, tobacco czars employed readers, who read news and literature from around the world - a tradition that gave workers the reputation of being the world's most educated and well read (to). It didn't take very long before they started organizing and progressively acquired political clout. They joined in all the major strikes in the country, supported José Martí's struggle for independence and later Castro's revolution. Nowadays, the reader's fare is limited to Granma, the national paper, and romance novels.
Underlying such productivity is the state's new rewards policy. With the crisis, the government dug up an agricultural law from the late 1980s that allowed independent tobacco farmers to use unused cropland to grow tobacco.
The government offered other incentives as well. The state still controls the price of tobacco and provides fertilizer and agricultural supplies, but now farmers are reimbursed according to their productivity. The more they produce, the more they earn, and part of their income is in dollars. The same rewards apply to factories. Workers receive six percent of their wage in dollars and extra money for each cigar they make above their daily quota. At the Pilotos factory, some workers have more than doubled their $16 monthly income.
All over Cuba, the incentives have worked: between 1996 and 2000 the number of cigars exported rose from 70 million to 118 million. And this year, Habanos S.A., the distribution company for Cuban cigars, plans to ship 150 million.
Shop for a real Cohiba Cuban Cigar
So, as long as the embargo is in effect, as long as there are customers in the United States who want to smoke Cuban cigars, and as long as there are online vendors in other countries ready to ship those cigars to the United States, Cuban cigars will keep making their way past customs and its colleagues and into the United States.
Historians assure us that the first great tobacco plantations in Havana , Cuba were created during the 17th century in the eastern part of cuba and they extended progressively towards western cuba. The apex of this crop coincided with the emigration of thousands of people from the Canary Islands, Spain, at the end of the 19th century. These people settled in the following areas, Sancti Spiritus, Villa Clara and also Pinar del Rio.
Before trying to identify fraud cigars, it helps if you know how cigars are produced and distributed. All Cuban cigars are called Habanos, and are regulated by a government department of the same name. Cigars are gathered each day from the cuban factories and sent to the Habanos warehouse to await sale. Located throughout the world are authorized Habanos dealers who get a large portion of these cigars, although the quantities shipped represent only a small proportion of what the dealers desire. A much smaller portion of the factory output is divided amongst the 20 or so domestic cigar stores, almost all of which are located in Havana.
Every week or two, the Havana stores get an shipment of cigars, mostly the smaller cigars but also a few of the large types (robustos, churchills, torpedoes, double coronas) that everyone is looking for. You cannot get on a plane to Havana on a whim and buy any Cuban you want. The large-size cigars are very hard to find. Relatively few are made, and only a small portion are sold in Cuba. Spread these prized few around to all the local and international dealers vying for them, and you can start to get an understanding why so few store-purchased cigars ever get to America.These increases were not stable and produced a new decrease that reached a critical point in 1980 with a harvest of only 7,636 tons, the lowest harvest in the whole of this century caused by the devastating effects of tobacco mildew, 80% of the production was lost. The highest yield in this period was obtained in the harvest of 1965-1966 with 876kg/hectare. The unions are powerful, however, and though they know that such visits may inhibit workers' efficiency and quality, they also see the tours as a source of revenue. A cut of the entrance fee is given to the factories and the Ministry of Agriculture, which use the money to improve the workers' lives, including providing better food, healh care and child care.
When in Havana, I am constantly badgered by young people on the street offering me "Buen tabaco, cheap, cheap." Many times, out of curiosity and the hope of scoring a deal, I have followed these fellows to the typical sweaty, tiny room in a rundown tenement. Upon our arrival, my escort would disapear for a moment and then return with two or three other people and several boxes of difficult-to-find, large-size cigars. I would take a quick look and decline by saying the cigars were "falsos" (fake) and not worth five dollars. The young man and several local supporters would swear most loudly that the cigars were indeed very real, lifted from the cigar factory by their dear Aunt Carmen, who works there. In truth, the boxes were stolen, but the cigars were made of inferior tobacco, not worthy of Cuban cigarettes, much less cigars, found somewhere on the black market and produced by inexperienced rollers working out of their homes.
Any and all encounters with any and all individuals selling Cubans, whether it is in New York City or on the streets of Havana, should be approached with skepticism. Some cigars, especially premium brands, use different varieties of tobacco for the filler and the wrapper. "Long filler cigars" are a far higher quality of cigar, using long leaves throughout. These cigars also use a third variety of tobacco leaf, a "binder", between the filler and the outer wrapper. This permits them to use more delicate and attractive leaves as a wrapper. If you're viewing four boxes and locate a serious problem with one box, there is a very good probablity that the rest of the four boxes are also fake. If you're not sure of the authenticity, sit and smoke a cigar with the salesperson. Try and pick a sample cigar that looks fake or feels hard and may be rolled too tight.
Here is what you should notice: Box Appearance. Ideally, the box should be in good condition, free of scuff marks and nicks. You don't want a box that looks like it's been shuffled around for six months looking for someone stupid enough to buy it. The first thing to thing about is the box's weight. If it seems too heavy, you may desire to have a closer look. For some reason, many of the fake boxes are manufactured with plywood of excessive size and weight. Another reason for a fake box being too heavy is that the cigars are rolled by students who jammed too much tobacco into the wooden tobacco cigarette rolling tube.
After being sheparded into the color-grading room, I decided that I had had enough and left. Too bad for the color grader, who didn't have the same option. He must have been blinded by all the camera flashes and video lights being shoved in his face. In light of these problems, the government has thought about limiting or banning the cigar factory tours. In fact, they were outlawed for a time late last year at Partagas and La Corona.In the rush to meet demand, the quality of many premium cigars suffered for brief periods of time. Eventually, consumer demand so far outpaced supply that many of those who took it up had to cease the practice altogether. For many, this was mainly due to either lack of supply, or overinflated prices. For others, the newness of the fad had simply worn off. Today, cigar prices have descended to reasonable ranges, and supply of the best brands is abundant for those who continue to enjoy cigar smoking . even in the face of public scrutiny and disapproval.These high-quality cigars almost always blend varieties of tobacco. Even Cuban long-filler cigars will combine tobaccos from different parts of the island to incorporate several different flavors.
Cuba exports black and golden cigar tobacco. After the triumph of the revolution, the production of cigar tobacco experienced an apex, reaching its highest historical levels.
The fake cigar scenario is more commonplace than ever these days, with so many new smokers trying to find for Cubans. Add to this the increasing ability of counterfeiters, who have begun creating boxes that look very real. The newest fad on the streets of America are cigars they call "second quality." At that stage, measures were taken in Havana to achieve a recovery in production and it was possible to obtain a recovery in production and there was a progressive increase that in 1976 reached 50,669 tons, the best harvest for 15 years. I can assure everyone that there is no such thing as a factory second from Cuba. If the cigar is flawed, it doesn't leave the country. Any sub-par cigar rolled by students or found to contain problems is purchased inside the Cuba or Havana.
While it is possible to buy Cubans in countries like as Mexico and Canada and then resell them in America, there is only a minimal profit available in buying a box in Mexico for, say, a $325 price, and reselling it for a $400 price. Tobacco taxes usually eradicate this third-country idea in every country but one: Spain. Factor into the equation the problem of losing cigars to customs, and it becomes clear that reselling cigars bought abroad doesn't make much financial sense. Smugglers are interested soley in making money, and their favorite method is to buy a box of counterfeit cigars for $30 in Havana and then turn around sell it for $400 in the States. Even if they wanted to buy real Habanos they couldn't, since there aren't very many available. Store prices in Cuba have risen 40%, in the last year, forcing even more smugglers to the dark side in an attempt to maintain large profits.