The New World: Nicaragua and the Heirs of Cuba

The rupture of 1959 shattered an industry — and founded several new ones. What Cuban families built in exile has redrawn the map of the cigar: today it runs through Estelí, Santiago de los Caballeros and Danlí just as surely as through Havana.

Exile and New Terroirs

In 1964, the Cuban exile José Orlando Padrón opened a small factory in Miami; in 1970 he established a production facility in Estelí in Nicaragua, where the volcanic soils of the Estelí, Condega and Jalapa valleys gave Cuban seed a new home. In the Dominican Republic, the 1970s saw the creation of production sites for the non-Cuban versions of major exile brands; around Santiago a distinct centre of premium tobacco emerged, and from 1990 Davidoff also produced there after the house had parted ways with Cuba. Honduras became the third pillar of the New World. None of this was straightforward: when the United States imposed an embargo on Sandinista Nicaragua in the 1980s, Padrón was forced to relocate temporarily to Honduras — only in 1990 did production return to Estelí.

Boom and Boutique

In 1992, the magazine Cigar Aficionado appeared in the United States — and acted as the catalyst for an unprecedented boom: in the mid-1990s, demand for premium cigars rose so rapidly that tobacco and manufacturing capacity became scarce. The excess was followed by a shakeout, and from it emerged a more mature industry. Since the 2000s, a boutique movement has shaped the landscape: small manufactories, limited releases and adventurous blends that cross national borders — often combining filler tobaccos from several terroirs in a single cigar, something that would have been unthinkable in the Cuban tradition.

The New Balance of Power

The present-day figures are unambiguous: since the mid-2010s, Nicaragua has been the largest supplier of handmade premium cigars to the US market, overtaking the long-dominant Dominican Republic; in 2025 roughly 60 per cent of US imports came from Nicaragua. Cuba is absent from that statistic entirely — the embargo continues to keep the Habano out of the world’s largest single market. On the rest of the world market the Habano remains the historical reference, but the New World has long since earned equal standing. The question of where the world’s finest cigar is made now has more answers than ever.