Mohamed Zeidan (Lebanon) Habano Man of the Year in the Retailing and Business Category. Salesman of Cuban cigars There’re several features that give this product its luxurious markings. First of all, the content. No other place on earth produces better tobacco than Cuba! It’s a perfect combination of soils, weather conditions and passion that are present in all production stages.

Secondly, the final touch. Since you’ve inherited all that knowledge and expertise from so many generations, skillful hand rollers that execute their art with amazing perfection, too hard to be copycatted.

Thirdly, the silky, even and luring presentation, reeking of so many lovely scents and well wrapped. Once the box is opened, the smoker is blessed by its implicit divinity.

Finally, a Habano is only a luxury, an element that accompanies great connoisseurs. As a matter of fact, yes, it’s necessary to be a connoisseur to cotton on to the mysteries of Habanos.

Ricardo Salas (Cuba) Marketing Expert at Cuban Tobacco International I smoked my first cigar when I was nine. My father used to leave butts on ashtrays around the house and one day before my grandma could throw them into the trash bin, I laid my hands on one of those that was still quite large. Since I was already used to smoking cigarettes, I lit it and I naively decided to puff at it as if it were a cig. That regretful experience kept me away from smoking until my teens. One day, in the middle of a sugarcane plantation near the Urbano Noris Mill in Holguin, me and my high school classmates thought it was time to complement our bizarre looks of half Beatle and half sugarcane cutter by lighting a cigar that the Sugar Harvest Office used to dole out freely, and perhaps wrongly, among permanent cutters working in the fields.

Eventually, time turned that juvenile standoffishness into a professional consecration as I became aware of this magic product. Tobacco and cigars panned out to be top exports and parts of the economic speech touched by the hick flavor of the harvest, the wonderful craftsmanship of the decoration, the globetrotting gallery of motley cases and boxes, the majestic ceremony of lighting a Habano, the autobiography trapped in the limelight, a dream maker, evoker of muses and ancestors, of Havana verandas, nostalgias of hometown Santiago, History lessons, diva and leader, song and poem, painter and poet, the sunshine of my land and a winter afternoon over the Caribbean, heart of my homeland and soul of Cuba.

Abel Exposito (Cuba) General Manager of the Partagas Habano House and Habano Man of the Year in the Retailing Category Habano is, and make no mistakes about it, the world’s best cigar. The quality of this product has improved dramatically in recent years, with highlights for the cases of five to ten stogies and limited editions. Factories are doing a great job and the new breed of hand rollers is excellent, so the future of the industry is secured. Habanos stand out for both the size and the way they burn, let alone their presentation. I’d like to single out the dark-layer limited edition.

Gary Heathcott (United States) Publicist and Habano Aficionado With over 500 years under its belt, the Cuban cigar brags around and gets better with each passing year. I cannot mention another product that 500 years later is now more appreciated and enjoyable than ever before. In a society in which a good cigar is maybe the last legal stronghold of pure pleasure, Habano sits atop the rest of all other measurable categories and it’s all because of its quality, consistence and flavor.

Samuel Menzi (Switzerland) Habano Man of the Year in the Retailing Category. Cigar Salesman and Owner of a Habano House in Zurich. Habanos show the way for other cigars. Producers elsewhere match their stogies with those made in Cuba. Habanos are the only cigars that really taste when you puff at them.

Miguel Campoy (Spain) Deputy Director of Market Operations at Habanos Corporation For me, Habanos are the scent of Cuba. A cigar from this neck of the woods can be smoked at any time, without driving your attention away from what you’re doing. However, smoking a Habano is a special moment. It means relaxation, reflection, making time stand still for a while and feel yourself. Feeling that it’s me and watch from a distance how the rest of the world waits just for me; watch the walls of this immense humidor called Cuba through the rising billows of smoke given off by the burning Habano.

Massimo de Giovanni (Italy) Founder of www.elmundosecreto.com website, publicist, journalist and businessman linked to the pharmaceutical industry A Habano is a top-notch, highly engineered product and a unique work of art than can’t be duplicated because it’s completely rolled by hand.

A Habano is a paroxysm of good taste, the loyal companion of that intrinsic solitude that dwells inside of each and every one of us. That’s why I love Cuba and its cigars are the ultimate expression of its culture and the tradition of the Cuban people to reveal the unseen sides, the untold stories about a superb lifestyle that marks the largest of the Antilles.

Roberto Rodriguez Pardal (Argentina) Chief of Manufacture at Tabacos Manrique in Buenos Aire, A Cigar Warehouse Founded in 1928 I’ve known the unmistaken scent of tobacco packs from Pinar del Rio. I’ve seen my relatives have Maria Guerrero cigars pressed between their lips all day long. I’ve unnerved, knit together and chosen leaves for capa, tripa and capote. I’ve rolled dry leaves, shipped and stamped boxes and put filets around cedar wood cases. I mean, I’ve gone the whole hog from the seeds to the end product. Therefore, my pores are filled up with the fine aroma of the world’s best cigars.

I get very upset whenever I hear people in other countries –some of them from Caribbean nations- that intend to mar the honor of dry-behind-the-ears smokers who know how to pull a good stogie out of the humidor, cut it open carefully, light it and see how it burns only to surrender to its flavor. Can’t they see those ad-laden places are stripped of the salt, the waters, the soils, the weather this island has been blessed with, and above all, the expertise and wisdom of skillful hand rollers? How in the world can they try to goad us into believing they’re talking about pure Habanos when the only thing they got from Cuba is a bogus trademark?

Fortunately, the painstaking battle in defense of Cuban cigars is my own war, too, and believe me, that effort is paying off. Just remember a U.S. court of law ruled a ban on the Cohiba brand.

My house used to import leaves type 15A from Pinar del Rio, bought from Antero Gonzalez’s nephews. I still preserve a 50-year-old map with all tobacco regions pinpointed in it. We used to buy tobacco from Menendez & Co. on 405 Amistad Street (where the H. Upmann factory used to stand in the past) and I still keep the invoice receipts. So, when you smoke a Cuban cigar, how can’t you recognize Vuelta Abajo, Partido, Remedios, Oriente, Mayari and Sagua de Tanamo?

What other country in the world can guarantee since 1492, with the sweat of its heroic people, the making of hand-rolled cigars, the making of packs and bundles tied up in fibers of raffia palm and thatches? Only Cuba, my friend, because Habanos are only from Cuba.