This is a three-pack impossible to tear apart, just as much as the history of the tobacco industry is linked for forever more to the history of Cuba.

The 19th century witnessed the big break around the world of the Habano, the original name that had been making the rounds since the 1790s to officially call the tobacco grown in Vuelta Abajo. When someone talks about Havana, the word Habano comes to mind, and when someone speaks of tobacco, Cuba pops up. The industry of hand-rolled cigars –with a wonderful history of its own- has no doubt played a major role in enriching both the culture and national identity of the Cuban people.

It’s made from top to bottom by human hands, with great tenaciousness, patience, care and harmonious collective effort, keeping an eye on the quality of seeds, removing the extra buds, watching the color, making the leaves look beautiful and haughty, with a blend of shades that many fine artists have splayed on canvass, let alone the gorgeous tobacco plantations and houses where those leaves are cured before heading in bales to their final destination.

In the city, experienced artisans will rely on their wisdom in the trade to come up with cigar rings, resulting from a combination of leaves only they can make and in which the strong, mild and light flavors are properties that let smokers make unmistaken picks. The Habano will be ready once it’s been labeled according to its shade and only after a woman’s fingers at the factory decorate them with lovely rings and stickers that will give cigars a perfect token of artistic dignity.

The brands wound up giving cigars the prestige and top quality that Cuba’s top-notch stogies have reached in the world market. England’s Edward VII overrode the ban imposed by his mother Queen Victoria and he lifted it on the very day of his crowning. “Gentlemen, you may smoke.” Lord Byron is said to be the author of the first Ode to Cigars. “I always carry Cuba in my lips,” said Winston Churchill at age 20.

The industry of cigar boxes and cases was closely likened to the art of stamp making in Cuba. Before the second half of the 19th century, cigars for smoking were packed in huge wooden boxes with as many as 5,000 to 10,000 each, laid out in bundles of 100 to 150 units apiece. The registry was then known as Brand or Iron Brand of Warranty, a way to thwart makers of phony stogies. As time rolled on, smaller boxes, mostly made of cedar, came out, this time around wrapped up in lithographic labels printed in sole ink over papers of different colors where the name of the maker and other useful information used to be stamped.

Lithography is an art nobody should fail to mention in this industry given the tremendous ripple effects it had on the cigar-making industry. Images, stamps, nail covers, ribbons, fillets, rings and a whole lot more embellished the boxes of Cuban cigars like never before. With all of them in tow, artistic engraving got a new lease on life. The art of cigar collection –known as cigar memorabilia- also turned out to be an expression of cultural advance.

Since the 1840s and 1850s, a number of objects and utensils designed for smokers have been tacked on Habanos. Cases or vases for snuff, cigar boxes, pouches, burners, ashtrays, tips, cutters, pipes and humidors have been built in a variety of materials and shapes. Cigar tin boxes, leather pouches, cartons, wooden cases –either gilt or painted and made of ivory or nacre- stand for some kind of amazing craftsmanship linked to the marketing of Cuban cigars.

But pouches used to top the list of any smoker’s utensils. Word has it that in the mid 19th century, a Cuban artisan named Rojas used to make wonderful cases for some of Europe’s finest cigar and tobacco stores.

Pipes –some of them as simple as the ones dug out in archeological sites, and others more sophisticated- have made this particular object the trademarked companion of some celebrated figures, like Sherlock Holmes, the legendary character made up by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The lavish mansions of Cuba’s and Europe’s former nobles used to treasure the well-known spittoon, a utensil commonly used in any smoker’s house.

Pouches were hand in hand with fancy clothing: light-colored shirts, Cuban guayaberas, dark-hued pants, two-toned shoes and, most of the time, frock coats and top hats. On the other hand, cigar makers coined a jargon that eventually fleshed out the linguistic elements of culture. Among the best-known terms are filler, layer, binder, hand-rolling, rings and wrapper –now translated into English- and others like cogollero, gavilla, despalillo, chinchalero, mancuerna and desbotonar that can only be borrowed from the Cuban lexicon. But their vocabulary also grew in conventional terms as famous novels from universal literature and pieces of news from the printed press began to be read out loud in cigar factories across the island nation.

Poetry, music, architecture, craftsmanship, silver and gold handwork, lithography, cigar memorabilia, engraving, photography, literature… they are all present in a good Habano to bring delight to those still trapped in its magical spell.