Is Cuba Still the Measure of All Things?

For over a century the question of the world’s finest cigar was not really a question: the answer was Havana. For some years now, however, it has been asked again in earnest — in lounges and specialist shops — by people who love the Habano and yet hesitate before reaching for the box. What happened? An assessment in four chapters — and a conclusion.

The Price Jump

The turning point can be dated. In 2020, the British conglomerate Imperial Brands sold its half-share in the marketing company Habanos S.A. to an Asian investor consortium. From May 2022, a new, globally harmonised pricing architecture came into effect: the prestige lines — Cohiba, Trinidad, and also Montecristo 1935 and Romeo y Julieta Línea de Oro — were raised everywhere to the level of the Hong Kong market, one of the most expensive in the world. In many European markets this meant a two-and-a-half- to threefold increase for Cohiba, a three- to fourfold increase for Trinidad; the rest of the catalogue rose by around five to twenty per cent. According to industry reports, this happened at the instigation of the new owners. Since then adjustments have been made annually — more moderately of late, but always upwards. What was an expensive cigar has become a luxury item that many long-standing customers simply can no longer afford.

The Strategy Behind It

Measured against its own figures, the plan is working. Habanos S.A. reported a record turnover of 721 million US dollars for 2023 and another record of 827 million for 2024 — after turnover in the years before the price reform had long oscillated between around 500 and 570 million. The growth is carried by the top segment: limited editions, exclusive formats, collector’s items. And it has a clear geography — China has risen to become the highest-revenue single market, the Asia-Pacific region contributing around a quarter of total revenue value; Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Germany follow. The criticism is as old as any luxury strategy: a pleasure product rebuilt into a status symbol and object of speculation loses the smokers who sustained it over decades. Habanos is visibly accepting this.

The Quality Question

Running parallel to the price debate was a second, more uncomfortable one. Cuban agriculture is in deep crisis: fuel, fertiliser and materials are in short supply, and on 27 September 2022 Hurricane Ian struck the Vuelta Abajo at full force — roughly ninety per cent of the drying barns in Pinar del Río were damaged or destroyed. In the following season only around half the planned acreage was planted, some 5,000 rather than 11,000 hectares: the smallest tobacco harvest on record. Into this same period fall the complaints of many aficionados about tobaccos that seem too young and plugged cigars with a hard draw — individual observations, not statistics, but they accumulated conspicuously during a phase when demand far outstripped supply. Fairness requires adding: construction inconsistencies have always existed in the Habano, the state manufactories have long tested draw resistance by machine, and whoever encounters a well-aged current box will still find cigars of rare quality inside. It is precisely this, however, that has become a lottery — one that is harder to forgive at today’s prices than it once was.

The New World on an Equal Footing

While Cuba was wrestling with itself, the competition delivered. Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and Honduras — built up not least by Cuban exile families — stand for consistent construction, aged tobaccos and an appetite for innovation foreign to Cuban tradition: blends across national boundaries, experimental fermentations, a lively boutique segment. Since the mid-2010s Nicaragua has been the largest supplier of handmade premium cigars to the US market; in 2025 around sixty per cent of imports there originated from Nicaragua. In the tastings of specialist magazines, cigars from the New World regularly appear at the front of the rankings — not as honourable mentions, but as a matter of course. In terms of price, much of this now competes in a bracket that belonged to the Habano before 2022. How this catching-up began is told in the article on the New World.

What Remains

Two things cannot be argued away. The terroir of the Vuelta Abajo has remained unmatched — despite Cuban seed and Cuban knowledge, no other country has reproduced the earthy, spicy character of a great Habano. And the historical point of reference persists: this industry has measured itself against Cuba since the nineteenth century. But the question of whether Cuba is still the measure of all things no longer has a single answer. It depends on which measure one applies — origin and myth, consistency of craftsmanship, or the ratio of price to pleasure. By the first measure, Cuba has kept its monopoly. By the other two it must submit to comparison like everyone else — and loses it more often than is good for the myth.