Cohiba Cigar Brand to Mark 50th Anniversary at Next Week’s Habano Festival

The celebration of 50 years of Cohiba brand has been a perfect opportunity for Habanos S.A. to shed light on its Cohiba Medio Siglo (ring gauge 52 x 102 mm long), which will join the brand’s regular portfolio, within Línea 1492, in tribute to the brand’s 50th anniversary, launched in 1966. The celebration will be the theme of choice for the upcoming Habano Festival next week.

Medio Siglo represents a new vitola for Habanos and its sizes also pay homage to two other classic vitolas treasured in Línea 1492. Cohiba Medio Siglo features Cohiba Siglo VI’s ring gauge 52 and Cohiba Siglo I’s length (102 mm), so it’s a habano with a clipped and modern format, absolutely new in the brand, with a drawing time of approximately 30 minutes and the mild strength Línea 1492 has been famous for.

The history of the different editions from Habanos S.A.’s flagship brand –the Cohiba habanos- teed off long before they were named by Cuban heroine Celia Sanchez Manduley, who dusted off the old term used by Cuban aboriginals to call their rustic roll of tobacco leaves they used to smoke.

Stemming right from the smokes cigar rollers prepare for themselves, Lanceros were the first habanos Cuban President Fidel Castro used to give as a personal gift to dignitaries and foreign visitors. At that time, they didn’t have a name or distinctive brand to call their own, and the band showed the name of the personality the precious gift was destined to.

Mass production began revving up in 1966 –finally named as Cohiba- and yet they didn’t have a design of their own, which was eventually revealed in 1969. It was some kind of black-and-white stained-glass window inside half a semicircle, sporting the word “Cohiba” under it on a black backdrop. All that much was clustered into a band that was half white and half black.

Shortly after that, the band was transformed, with the brand name in the middle of a band that was half gilt and showed some sort of chessboard on top. In that same design, the head of a Taino aboriginal was used for the first time, an icon that has lived out to date amid a number of modifications.

One of the main features of the Cohiba brand is the use of the best tobacco harvested in the fine plantations of Vuelta Abajo (Pinar del Rio), especially the one hailing from El Corojo, which produces a soft-texture and light-colored wrapper leaf. For the filler, Cohiba takes the very best sun-grown leaves out of Pinar del Río, from San Luis y San Juan in Vuelta Abajo.

Another characteristic of the Cohiba brand is the so-called “third fermentation”, a special process consisting of slight fermenting coupled with an aging procedure.

Thanks to nonstop innovation, Cohiba has always been the leading brand that marches ahead of all trendsetters in the realm of habanos. It was the first to introduce a Reserve back in 2002, and a Grand Reserve in 2009.