There are in the world just a few things that are known without question to be the best of their kind. A Habano or Havana cigar is one of them.
In Cuba in 1492 the Spanish expedition commanded by Christopher Columbus saw tobacco for the first time in the New World. The Taino Indians rolled and burnt some mysterious leaves, which they called Cohiba, in an unknown ceremony for the explorers. From that starting point more than five hundred years ago, tobacco has been traded and planted throughout the world. Since its discovery, Tabaco Negro Cubano or Cuban Black Tobacco has been considered the best in the world because of the unique growing conditions in some areas of the Island. This distinction remains incontestably valid after more than five centuries.
The heart of the distinction is the tobacco and its taste born of a combination of four factors that exist only in Cuba: the soil, the climate, the varieties of Cuban black tobacco seed and the know-how of the tobacco growers and cigar makers. Other places may have acquired some Cuban skills, even some Cuban seeds, but never the natural gifts of the Cuban soil and the Cuban climate. These you will find nowhere else.
Nor will you find anything that matches the centuries-old culture of cultivating Cuban tobacco: the extraordinary labour that the tobacco farmer invests in his crop; the months and years of patient waiting before his leaf is deemed fit for a Habano.
A further distinction lies in the definition of the term “Habanos”. All Habanos are Cuban, but by no means all Cuban cigars are Habanos.
