Partagas Cigars

PARTAGAS BRAND HISTORY

A tale of passion, dedication, ingenuity, and murder characterizes the rise of one of Cuba’s most famous cigar brands: Partagas. Original founder Don Jaime Partagas y Ravelo was born in Catalonia, Spain in 1816. The son of a tailor, Partagas migrated to Cuba in 1831. He worked for a businessman in Havana for a period, but had set about acquiring several of the choicest tobacco plantations available in the island’s now celebrated Vuelta Abajo tobacco-growing region. Don Jaime established the first Partagas factory in 1845 at 1 Cristina St. in Havana. His talent at blending and fermenting tobaccos made his brand extremely popular. It’s also believed he was one of the first factory owners to employ a lector, or a reader, to read to the cigar-rollers while they worked.

In the midst of his company’s success, Don Jaime was murdered on one of his plantations in 1868. He was shot on an evening in June and died a month later from his wounds. A number of motives were at play, including the unscrupulous business practices Don Jaime purportedly exercised in order to acquire land, his infringement on a competitor’s brand name, and an alleged affair with his killer’s wife. In the wake of his death, Don Jaime’s cigar-making operation and the Partagas brand would pass through a handful of proprietors, including his son, José Puig Partagas, who sold the business in 1876 to J.A. Bances to alleviate heavy debts.

In 1899, Bances partnered with Ramon Cifuentes Llano whose extensive familiarity with tobacco would benefit Partagas tremendously and begin a new and lengthy chapter in the brand’s history. Cifuentes acquired Partagas from Bances with a handful of business partners the following year and facilitated a healthy amount of growth until his death in 1938. Cifuentes’ sons, Ramon, Rafael, and Manuel, established a new company, Cifuentes y Cia, as the parent corporation for the production and distribution of Partagas, as well as the legendary Bolivar and La Gloria Cubana brands, which the Cifuentes would acquire in the 1950s. Under the direction of the Cifuentes family, Partagas had grown into one of the top-selling Cuban brands in the world, second only to H. Upmann by 1958.

Like many revered Cuban cigar brands, the fate of Partagas took a dramatic shift in the wake of Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1960. Communist leaders seized 16 cigar factories, including the Partagas operation. Although family patriarch Ramon Cifuentes Toriello had been offered the position of running Cuba’s now state-owned tobacco monopoly, he declined and instead immigrated to the United States. Like countless other Cuban immigrants, Ramon Cifuentes Toriello started over from scratch. As fate would have it, his future in the cigar business with his beloved Partagas brand was far from over.

In the U.S., Toriello guided Partagas through its non-Cuban rebirth in the portfolio of tobacco giant General Cigar. Company owner Edgar Cullman forged a decades-long partnership with Toriello. By the mid-1970s, it was abundantly clear the Cuban embargo would not be lifted anytime soon. General Cigar officially launched the first Dominican-made Partagas in 1977. The company invested heavily in establishing a number of Cuban-legacy brands in the U.S. market by manufacturing the cigars in other countries like the Dominican Republic. Brands like Cohiba, Hoyo de Monterrey, and Punch again found a home on the shelves of premium American cigar shops, in addition to General Cigar’s iconic Macanudo line. Partagas remains a key brand in the company’s extensive portfolio. Following, we’ve outlined a number of the most popular Partagas releases.

PARTAGAS BRAND OVERVIEW

Partagas cigars encompass a handful of well-respected, classic smokes, as well as more contemporary releases. The original Partagas blend is perhaps the best-known non-Cuban version with a medium-bodied profile of nuts, spices and wood. Approachable and flavorful, the classic Partagas brand is handcrafted from a Cameroon wrapper leaf over a balanced amalgam of Dominican and Mexican binder and filler tobaccos.

Back in 1995, General Cigar released a coveted limited edition of the original blend called Partagas 150 to celebrate the brand’s 150th anniversary. Roughly one million of the small batch smokes were rolled in eight traditional shapes, some of which sold for more than $70 apiece. The blend is particularly noted for its aged Cameroon wrapper leaf, which is more than 40 years old today. A subsequent edition called Partagas 160 was drafted from the same supremely aged Cameroon wrapper leaf and was released in 2006. There aren’t many of these sought-after anniversary cigars left, but if you encounter one and you’re feeling a bit spendy, by all means, give them a try.

When you’re curious about, or craving, a more full-bodied Partagas cigar, Black Label is worth a taste with its jet-black Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper and a spicy core of Nicaraguan long-fillers. Notes of espresso, earth, black licorice, and baking spices characterize a nice variety of classic shapes.

The more recently released Partagas 1845 line also delivers a bit more oomph with a complex core of Dominican and Nicaraguan tobaccos beneath a robust wrapper variety, including Cuban-seed tobaccos grown in Ecuador and Connecticut. The bands and boxes show an evolution in the company’s more traditional packaging designs.

General Cigar also released a commemorative blend called Benji Menendez Partagas Master Series in honor of the company’s celebrated blender, Benji Menendez, who blended cigars for the company for many decades.

If you’re committed to getting your hands on Cuban Partagas, take a look online for the occasional Partagas humidors that come up for sale at auctions. They can fetch a pretty penny, some in the many tens of thousands of dollars, but are no doubt, legitimate Cuban Partagas smokes that have been well-preserved for many years. While you’re saving up, toss a handful of Dominican-made Partagas cigars in your cart from right here at Holt’s. There’s a good chance they taste just as great.