There were no Montague and Capulet families involved, nor teenagers who got carried away with their love and died for it. But the story of the Romeo & Juliet cigars has also been one of passion and willingness, a recount of 131 years for one of the best and most recognized Habano brands in the whole wide world.

It all began on February 22, 1876 when D. Inocencio Alvarez and D. Jose Garcia requested permission from the Mayor Office to register a cigar trademark called “Romeo & Juliet” for use at the factory they owned on 87 San Rafael Street.

So, this official notice was recorded in the Official Gazette for the trademark owners to examine the design of the brand intended to be registered, created with right to opposition. Any claim whatsoever was supposed to be notified to the Mayor Office within ten days from the date of publication.

Until 1886, Astoria’s natives Inocencio Alvarez and Jose “Manin” Garcia remained tied up to the cigar factory on 87 San Rafael Street, outside the walled Havana. On that same year, they decided to split and Mr. Alvarez became the factory’s sole owner. In 1899, the cigar factory was moved to the old building on 129 Animas Street, former home to “La Eminencia,” a brand trademarked in the 1850s by the Antonio and Ramon Allones brothers.

A year later, Mr. Alvarez sold out the “Romeo & Juliet” factory to Prudencio Rabell, who in turn had previously acquired “La Honradez” cigarette factory from Jose Luis Susini.

When he was only nine years old, Jose Rodriguez Fernandez –who had been born in Astoria in 1866- had been sent to Cuba under the wing of his uncle and aunt to “make the Americas.” Since an early age, he began working at the “Cabañas & Carvajal” cigar factory, where he not only learned the stogie handrolling trade well, but also sucked in the secrets of the cigarmaking industry and moved up the ladder to become export manager.

In 1903, this Astoria’s native –known in the cigar realm as Don Pepin- was in a position to negotiate with Prudencio Rabell a bargaining price for the “Romeo & Juliet” factory, a move he pulled off with the help of Ramon Arguelles Busto, Antonio Rodes and Baldomero Fernandez, also from Spain. With this trio, Don Pepin founded a company called Rodriguez, Arguelles & Co.

Among the first initiatives carried through by Don Pepin, the construction of a hefty building –finally opened in 1905- was one for the books. The new building was perched on a block hemmed in the Belascoain, Concordia, Virtudes and Lucena streets, right where one of the city’s bullfighting plaza used to be. As a curiosity, the rodeo’s box office was used by the factory owners for over 50 years to pay employees their wages.

Sooner rather than later, “Romeo & Juliet” panned out to be one of the island nation’s major cigar factories, with a payroll of over a thousand workers and outputs way over half a million cigars a day.

In 1940, the Rodriguez, Arguelles & Co. was dissolved and eventually replaced by the “Romeo & Juliet” Cigar Factory S.A., with Don Pepin as President. When Don Pepin passed away on October 4, 1954, the front office was taken over by his nephew Hipolito Rodriguez.

On September 15, 1960, Resolution 20260, issued by the Ministry of Labor of the Republic of Cuba, authorized the placing in administration of the factory. Shortly after that, the factory was moved to 852 Belascoain Avenue, in downtown Havana, where 130 years after its big break in the market, it still keeps churning out one of the world’s finest Habanos money can buy: Romeo & Juliet.