| Montecristo (cigar Brand) |
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Information AboutMontecristo (cigar Brand) |
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Montecristo is the name of two brands of premium Cigar , one produced on the island of Cuba for Habanos SA , the Cuban state-owned tobacco company, and the other produced in the Dominican Republic for the Franco-Spanish tobacco monopoly Altadis SA . HISTORY The Montecristo brand was created in 1935 by Menendez, Garcia, Y Cia , then the owners of the popular H. Upmann and Partágas brands of cigars. Having just purchased the H. Upmann marque from J. Frankau & Co. , Menendez and Garcia decided to produce their own subset of the regular H. Upmann line, called the ''H. Upmann Montecristo Selection''. The name for the brand was inspired by the Alexandre Dumas novel '' The Count Of Monte Cristo '', which was supposedly a very popular choice among the ''torcedores'' (cigar rollers) in their factory to have read by the ''lector'' on the rolling floor. On the insistence of the John Hunter firm of Great Britain (which would later merge with J. Frankau & Co. to form Hunter & Frankau , Britain's sole importer of Cuban cigars to this day), the name was shortened to simply ''Montecristo'' and a new logo was designed for it: the yellow and red "crossed swords" logo the brand still bears today. Through the efforts of Alfred Dunhill, Ltd. , the Montecristo brand became incredibly popular worldwide and to this day accounts for roughly 50% of Habanos SA's worldwide cigar sales, making it the most popular Cuban cigar in the world. After the Cuban Revolution and the nationalization of the cigar industry in Cuba, Menendez and Garcia fled to the Canary Islands where they re-established the brand, but were later forced to quit due to copyright disputes with Cubatabaco . In the mid-1970's, the operation was moved to La Romana in the Dominican Republic and released for the US market, where Cuba's rights to the brand weren't recognized due to the Embargo . Menendez, Garcia, y Cia is now owned by Altadis SA, who controls its distribution and marketting in the United States. The original line had only five numbered sizes, with the two tubed cigar Vitolas added during the 1940's, but otherwise remained unchanged until after nationalization. With Menendez and Garcia gone after 1959, one of the top grade ''torcedores'', José Manuel Gonzalez , was promoted to floor manager and proceeded to breathe new life into the brand. In the early 1970's, four new sizes were added: the A, the Especial No. 1 and 2, and the Joyita. Through the 1970's and 1980's, Montecristo continued to rise in popularity among cigar smokers and firmly entrenched itself as one of Cuba's top selling cigar lines. In 2004, another new edition to the regular line was made with the Edmundo, a large robusto-sized cigar, named for the hero of Dumas' ''The Count of Monte Cristo'', Edmond Dantès. Montecristo is also regularly chosen to be featured in Habanos SA's annual ''Edición Limitada'' selection of cigars with a darker vintage wrapper and there are numerous limited edition releases of special Montecristo cigars for special occasions, anniversaries, the annual Habanos Festival, charities, etc. ''Vitolas'' in the Cuban Montecristo Line The following list of ''vitolas'' (sizes) within the Montecristo line lists their measurements in English and metric, their ''vitolas de galera'' (factory name), and their conventional name in American cigar slang. ''The Regular Line''
''Edición Limitada Releases''
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