When the Spanish crown lifted the commercial ban on tobacco in 1817, snuff was no longer consumed and the fashion of smoking rolled cigars caught on, hundreds of workshops or domestic cigar factories –many of them directly outfitted in houses– popped up in the island nation’s capital. The quality of Habanos rapidly conquered the world market and those early mom-and-pop businesses turned into huge factories in the heart of the city.

Fidel Castro and Che Guevara were big-time aficionados of Habanos and helped increase their mysticism. The seducing ability of these two revolutionaries and their leaderships were all by themselves two powerful allures and by following them on a daily basis their advocates soon perceived these rebels’ fondness for tobacco. Regardless of differences and distances, a similar boon to Habanos was made by Sir Winston Churchill, who showed up repeatedly in public pictures with a Habano. Just by pure chance, many boldface names in the world used to give some kind of power to the famous Cuban product, like an award bestowed on those men who have been born to be on the edge every step of the way. Yet winning that connatural acclaim with living history, the cigar hailing from the largest Caribbean island was forced to go a long way for centuries. The lands in the outskirts of Havana were perfect for other crops rather than for that plant that welcomed colonizers and provided aboriginals with the raw material for the bundles they used to smoke. Tobacco gave way to snuff, chewing balls, filler and cigarette. And in the effort to enhance the perspectives of what appeared to be a thriving business, the trappings of its zillion secrets were laid bare with each passing day. There, in the so-called Vuelta Abajo area, in Cuba’s westernmost end, the perfect soils for growing a higher-quality leaf finally turned up. And almost round the corner, the village of San Cristobal de La Habana –so flourishing from the very beginning and a mandatory bridge between the Americas and the New World– became the place to roll those leaves and ship the end products out to Europe. The commercial hustle and bustle fostered trade. The tobacco leaf found in Havana the timely location for its manufacture and shipping. As that trade hit on monarchic orders and the Church’s dogmas, a high wall threatened to build a roadblock on the way of the plant from Vuelta Abajo. But its brown texture, like an irresistible mulatto girl, coupled with its sinful aroma, was quickly all the rage through all walks of life in Europe, thus paving the way for smuggling operations and a craving for the soft drug. Tobacco is said to have healing properties for a number of ailments and its consumption –many times prescribed by physicians– became an anxiety killer and an emerging remedy for several diseases. To add more fuel to this paradoxical flame, tobacco wound up leaking through the cracks of the royal palaces and the Pope’s curia, like a little imp that had vanquished the noble ancestry. Thus, more African slaves were brought in, along with their smoking bundles, while the green-eyed bishop was surrendering to the thin-wrapper cigar. Then they wanted to have a piece of the pie. In 1817, the ban known as the Tobacco Stock was finally lifted, thus putting an end to a restriction that had lasted for over a hundred years. In light of the new perspectives along the way, more and more workshops opened. The city of Havana is not the place where tobacco is grown; it’s the place where tobacco is adopted, where it’s settled and rolled into shape. This drew the borderlines for a product that left localism behind once and for all to become universal. In the course of the 1840s, the tobacco industry welcomed state-of-the-art breakthroughs. Factories were built in high rises and they could process as much raw material as possible, like a hungry dragon. These were colonial-style buildings equipped with cellars and storehouses that let in dozens of mule-hauled buggies brimming with tobacco packs wrapped up in palm thatches. Each bale carried thousands of dried leaves that were later on put in the hands of expert weavers who could eventually turned the cured stuff into genuine artworks. This practice gave rise to waged workers, a secular specialization and a tradition in an industry rooted in Cuba’s autochthonous culture. In that same decade, a high-tech invention arrived in Havana and seized the tobacco industry. Cigar makers riveted their attention on the lithographic press as these businesspeople engaged in an unflagging competition to spruce up their Habano boxes with further allures in a bid to encourage sales and hamper fakery. Brandings became works of art and their beautiful designs are sought after by museums worldwide specialized in this particular collecting field. Habano is no longer a term that solely alludes to the cigar’s place of origin, but rather a denomination of origin protected and registered under the law, as a warranty of authenticity, unique quality and reference to the very best Premium cigar on the face of the earth. It’s also a seal of prestige, distinction and good taste in any nook and cranny of the planet. In response to a friend who will be visiting Cuba in coming days, a distinguished personality of Latin American literature asked that person to “bring me a box of Habanos.” Many would have asked exactly the same thing. Napoleon Bonaparte, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Orson Welles and countless other celebrities and personalities couldn’t escape from the aromatic temptation of the most genuine and universal of all Cuban products. And any item of superb quality rarely escapes from fakery. One of them is well documented by researcher Enzo Infante Urivazo in his essay entitled Habano Producers (1817-1860). As the lawsuit was being filed, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission proclaimed the following: “Tobacco harvested on the island of Cuba has taken the name of Habano since the times of Christopher Columbus, undoubtedly derived from the name of the city of Havana where it was first manufactured into cigars and of which the island has been an exporter under the respective denominations of Tabaco Habano and Cigarros Puros. “Due to its characteristic aroma and delicate taste, Cuban tobacco has been since then considered the best for making cigars and consequently, those cigars made with such exquisite tobacco enjoy the reputation of unique products among smokers and businesspeople. This reputation has prevailed for over three hundred years without being surpassed, not even matched, by any other tobacco.” During the 13th Habano Festival, the city that adopted the traditional Cuban product is being embraced once again by thousands of people attending the event, thus adding one more page to its long history linked to tobacco, a living and beautiful history as Havana itself.

Tobacco harvested on the island of Cuba has taken the name of Habano since the times of Christopher Columbus, undoubtedly derived from the name of the city of Havana where it was first manufactured