With a history of five centuries under its belt, both connoisseurs and smokers from all around the globe have made Cuban cigars their smoke of choice. No wonder we're talking about the world's best cigars. Top quality and exclusiveness are two of their outstanding features, a reason why Cuban cigars are the perfect companions for social functions, glittering galas or just the pleasure of sharing good times with others, no matter how many antismoking campaigns are being wielded worldwide.

Cigar ring collectors, for instance, reserve special spaces for the Cuban brands and cigar boxes. This is a practice as old as the hills, a must for businessmen and salespeople willing to protect their products as soon as cigar smoking became a hard habit to break a few centuries ago.

Graphic artists get kicks out of the way they make labels and rings in a multitude of colors and shapes. Like mail stamp collectors, cigar ring buffs have also played a role in the historic development of cigar puffing. Their collections portray different times, characters and personalities, let alone cultural details that enrich Cuban cigars on the whole.

There's also some kind of tie between tobacco and perfumes, especially stemming from the distinctive aroma of the plant's leaves. This fragrance ranked as one of the most sniffed scents among Havana residents back in the 18th century.

Tobacco has equally something to do with painting. Many artists, like Barcelona-born painter Vives Fierro, have entire collections devoted to tobacco, some of them featuring hand-rollers, cigar galleries and street scenes near cigar factories splashed on canvass.

What about the drug-making industry? This could have been a good start for this story because tobacco leaves used to be –and still are- the perfect cure for a number of ailments. They are great parasite killers, and that's something Spanish conquistadors learned well as soon as they came to the New World and got in touch with Cuba's aboriginal population.

Make no mistakes about it; tobacco is some kind of bridge, a linkage and common feeling between culture and industry, between the arts and trade, a god-sent sentence for those, whether smokers or not, that wallow in products that make men and women from all walks of life come together in the trudging pace of mankind.

The Best Story, The Best Origin Let's then put a little bit of history on the table, shall we? Rodrigo de Xerez and Luis de Torres were by far Christopher Columbus's best crew members. They were a warranty for the huge adventure that ended up with the discovery of tobacco as soon as they arrived in the Americas. Columbus picked them on November 2, 1492 to present the Spanish Catholic Monarchs' credentials to the Chinese emperor –they thought they had come to China and long coveted Japan. Instead, they'd landed in Cuba. On October 27, that same year, the Spanish fleet had arrived in Cuban soil. However, the first great discovery was made by Xerez and Toledo on November 4, the minute they happened on a plant they later on called tobacco.

In the Taino Chiefdom of Maniabon in eastern Cuba, Columbus's envoys had seen aboriginal islanders holding leaf pipes or tubes between their lips. In his personal recollection on this particular happening, Fray Bartolome de las Casas wrote down the story in his diary. From that moment on, an array of developments came to pass and Xerez's fledgling smoking habit even made him do time in a Spanish jail.

Dubbed Nicotiana Tabacum by scientists, Cuba's first dwellers preferred such words as cojiba, Cohiba or cohoba to name tobacco. The plant appears to hail from the South American family of the solanaceous species. When Spanish explorers came, they noted how aboriginal people used to grow tobacco. That points to the strong belief that tobacco is a hundred percent Cuban: any of the genus of chiefly American plants of the nightshade family with viscid foliage and tubular flowers, its tall erect stem averages eight feet tall, presenting few branches and twigs, lance-shaped whole leaves and whose Cuban variety is penciled in as the best kind under the sun (the Havanensis quality plus ultra).

This equally medicinal plant (used as a laxative and parasite killer) brings delight to those who once smoked it or still puff at it. Just to name only a few; notorious pirate Francis Drake and corsair John Howkins (both rascals convinced their henchmen it was a whole lot better to assail other vessels while billowing smoke rings, so cigars marked their crooked behavior through most of the 16th century); Russian czar Frederick I the Great; Benito Juarez; Abraham Lincoln; Napoleon Bonaparte; Jose Stalin; Ulysses Grant; Theodore Roosevelt; Sigmund Freud; Orson Wells; Ernesto Che Guevara, and Winston Churchill –the former British Prime Minister even gave his name away to be stamped on one of Cuba's best-known cigar rings.

The growing of tobacco was finally allowed by Royal Decree on October 20, 1614, though that same document banned its marketing and trade. Monopoly on the aromatic leaf also came via Royal Decree on December 18, 1740. That document also permitted the foundation of the Havana Royal Trade Company.

From that moment onward, the crop took peaks and valleys and weathered raging wars and continuous requests until it turned out to be one of Cuba's major industries. But tobacco elbowed its way across Europe in a hushed way. As time rolled on, tobacco wound up being accepted by everyone, egged by the same driving force that annoyed some and swept others off their feet.

An element worth taking account of is the Denomination of Origin. A thoroughbred Cuban cigar must be hand-rolled on the island nation, with leaves harvested by skillful Cuban hands and the sweat of an islander's brow. All those elements are later inhaled in a one-and-only vegetable piece made out of the love and dedication that each and every Cuban cigar really treasures within its tissues and nerves.

That's why Cuba's International Cigar Festival is the special moment for stogie aficionados, artists, journalists and enthusiasts from around the world to gather in the land of the globe's finest tobacco. The event is full of surprises and features an international cigar sommelier contest to handpick the best experts in the field in a number of categories swaying from best selection and best cutting all the way to best lighting and best combination with beverages and gourmet specialties.

The festival is also a perfect opportunity for swinging by tobacco plantations and cigar factories, not to mention being a once-in-a-lifetime chance to cotton on to the essences and scents that so many people around the world love and admire. Even a simple puff at a good hand-rolled Cuban cigar would do the trick.

A Magic Plant Though dubbed by scholars as Nicotiana Tabacum, aboriginal people in Cuba knew it simply by the name of cojiba, cohiba or cohoba. For others, the moniker hails from the islands of Trinidad & Tobago.

On the other hand, there are some who believe cohiba used to be a Y-shaped, hollow wooden instrument that former Indians used when inhaling the burning plant through their nostrils.

Sages have also found out that aboriginal dwellers used to pay cult to tobacco in a sort of ritual that included icons and a drum to thank the plant for the many benefits it used to bring to them.

Tobacco is also a key element for the gods and deities that African slaves brought from their homeland back in the 16th century. Under the shadow of rundown slave barracks, tobacco was the symbol of Osain (Orisha) the god of herbs; Eleggua, master of the pathways; Oggun, king of soldiers and blacksmiths, and Ochosi the Hunter.

All male Orishas smoke cigars and chew tobacco, they love rapé –the juice of its roots, flowers and leaves- and last not least, use it to cure many diseases and ailments.