Begotten out of the fantasy of Cuban cigar makers, who have been since the 19th century enjoying the reading of one of the best-known novels of universal literature, the celebrated Habano brand has had as adventurous a history as the story it was named after.

Word has it that in the sunny morning of August 25, 1846, readers of the Diario de la Marina, the official newspaper of Havana’s station, read a piece of news that struck their attention.

It was the publication, put out in pamphlets, of a literary work that had caused great commotion in the world: The Count of Montecristo, an adventure novel written by Alexander Dumas Sr. (1803–1870), translated into Spanish at the time by Cuba’s Agustin Palma, editor of the abovementioned periodical, and that made the rounds at the price of two reals for subscribers and two pesetas for non-subscribed readers.

In the face of the tremendous success the novel achieved in Havana –the work was sold in bookstores on both sides of Havana’s Obispo Street and in the rest of the country- a couple of cunning merchants involved in the tobacco industry decided to launch two new trademarks: one registered in Matanzas by Jose Marati, on 19 Calle del Medio Street, under the name of The Count of Montecristo; and the other one bestowed on Jose Valdes, from the cigar and cigarette factory on Obispo Street, who was pleased with the plain name of Montecristo.

Both registries are the most remote backgrounds about these two cigar trademarks named after the legendary count. However, none of both has anything to do with the larger-than-life Habano brand that saw the light of day nearly a century later, also in Havana, and took the name of Montecristo.

To speak about the latter, it’s important to go back to the 19th century, to the year 1865, when the tradition of reading novels and other books in cigar factories –in a bid to help workers raise their educational and cultural levels- first appeared.

As laborers were rolling world-known cigars with their own hands, they were listening to someone who was reading them literary works previously handpicked for their historic, social or adventurous topics –the most coveted ones among Cuban cigar makers.

The list of the most read fiction books at the time included those penned by Alexander Dumas (both senior and junior), Eugenio Sue, Victor Hugo and other famous authors. And as a matter of fact, The Count of Montecristo and The Three Musketeers ranked high on that list.

No wonder that by 1934, the tobacco company founded by Astoria’s brothers Alonso Menendez and Jose Garcia set out to launch a new brand under the name of H. Upmann-Montecristo, with five cigar rings numbered from one to five to please everybody’s likings in the Habano format.

The owners of the brand –blessed with a great commercial flair of their own- put the name of the factory where Montecristo cigars were being made right before the brand. A year later and given the quality of these Habanos, they suggested British company Stanley Phillips to introduce the new cigar brand in the UK, based on how demanding and knowledgeable English smokers actually were.

Even though the idea seduced Stanley Phillips –the company was well aware of how much Brits were stuck on the oldest cigar rings that used to be rolled in Cuban factories, including H. Upmann, founded in 1844 by two German brothers that eventually ended up in the hands of Menendez and Garcia- a drawback popped up: that brand was registered in England by Frankau & Co., a German competitor.

To close the deal, the British company touted the possibility of dropping the name of the factory from the trademark and just calling it Montecristo. From that moment onward, the brand has been known with that simple moniker in the domestic and international markets.

The business deal was rounded up when Mr. Phillips himself appointed his own nephew and one of the Hunter House directors, Jack Benjam, to lay out and develop a strategy aimed at introducing the new brand in Great Britain.

Mr. Benjam actually came up with a top-notch product for such a demanding market, but the cases and boxes featured labels and stickers that looked different to those that were glued in the finest and best-known Cuban cigar containers at the time.

With a new design, more suitable to the times, the Montecristo brand now shows a bright yellow background crossed by half a dozen swords that make up an unclosed equilateral triangle. Those small spaces in between are bright red –a perfect contrast with the yellow background- and the centerpiece is a fleur-de-lis, the token of the French court.

This flower is additionally shown –in white- in the narrow, brownish lithographed stripe that gets mixed up with the color of Habanos, yet with edges hued in white ink.

We’re not well aware of this, but we believe bright yellow stands for the tawny gold in the treasure that turned Edmund Dantes –the novel’s main character- into a well-to-do man. The swords, for their part, represent the surname Spada, linked to the fortune that was buried on the island of Montecristo.

Last but not least, the red inlays highlight the MONTECRISTO and HABANA names. The latter is a key term, the name of both the city and the seaport that harbor the genuine origin of this cigar –the Habano- thoroughly hand-rolled by Cuban cigar makers in an effort to put at your fingertips a ring like MONTECRISTO No. 4, the world’s bestselling cigar based on its top quality and refined presentation.