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The Makers

The Talisman Comes Full Circle: Cohiba’s Pigtail Returns to London

Nine years after its debut as a Limited Edition, the Cohiba Talisman joins the Linea Clasica as regular production. The world launch at the Orangery at Kensington Palace opened the brand’s 60th anniversary year.

2026-10-10

The Makers

The Bull Goes Dark: La Flor Dominicana Marks Ten Years of the Andalusian Bull

A decade after the original figurado became one of the most coveted cigars in the world, Litto Gomez returns to the 2016 La Canela harvest for a broadleaf-wrapped anniversary edition limited to 5,000 boxes.

2026-10-10

The Wire

Off-Grid: Wildfire Bets the Company on the Monthly Drop

The fifth release in Wildfire Cigar Co.’s made-to-order monthly series wears a towable trailer on its band. The October cigar is a 5 1/4 x 54 from Tabacalera William Ventura, priced at $14.

2026-10-10

The Wire

Berlin Blinks: Germany Spares Cigars the Worst of the Tobacco Tax Rise

A proposed twelve-fold increase in the ad valorem rate becomes a modest step instead, after the German cigar industry warned the original plan would decimate the trade.

2026-10-10

The Wire

La Aurora's October: Puro Vintage 2016 and Hors d'Age 2025

Two vintage-dated releases ship this month from the Dominican Republic's oldest cigar maker: a Salomon built on 2016 harvest leaf, and a new annual release named for cognac's highest age statement.

2026-10-03

The Makers

Death Mask: Apostate's First Cigar Out of Estelí

A Utah brand built on Mormon mythology moves production to Nicaragua's most notorious factory. The 5,000-cigar Death Mask started shipping October 1.

2026-10-03

The Lounge

Smoke 'N The Desert: Four Days in the Valley

Phoenix gets four days, ten events, and one hell of a weekend. PHX Cigar Week returns October 8-11 across six Valley cities.

2026-10-03

The Wire

Beast Mode Enters the Humidor: Marshawn Lynch and Kingmakers Launch a Regular-Production Cigar

The former Seahawks star's lifestyle brand makes its full cigar debut at a Las Vegas charity event, with a Nicaraguan blend developed alongside Kingmakers' Claudio Torres and a December retail rollout.

2026-10-03

The Vintage

Montecristo Fragata: Habanos' New Travel-Retail Exclusive, Unveiled at Cannes

A 140mm x 54 Duke vitola, the first time the format has carried the Montecristo blend, arrives in 20-count travel humidors for duty-free and travel retail only.

2026-10-03

The Makers

Fermin Perez Cigars Reboots: New Factory, New Distribution, New Puro Esteli

The Miami brand founded in 2021 moves all seven lines to Tabacalera Familia Disla in Esteli and U.S. wholesale to the new Domain Distribution platform, leading with a single-region corona.

2026-10-03

The Wire

Enki Rises: Don Emmanuel's Anunnaki Figurado Ships to Retailers

After its InterTabac premiere, the fourth Anunnaki vitola pairs a 'cabeza tumbada' cap with a covered foot, keeping the Eladio Diaz co-blended recipe while changing how the smoke starts.

2026-10-03

The Index

The Golden Band: How We Judge

Our annual ranking publishes its protocol before a single cigar is smoked: the panel, the blind rounds, the ballots, the conflicts. Rankings are never sold.

2026-09-25

The Wire

The FDA's Premium Cigar Fight, Explained

A decade-long legal battle over whether a handmade cigar is a tobacco product like any other. The courts have now answered, three times. What it means for the smoker.

2026-09-25

The Wire

Harvest 2026: What It Means for Next Year's Smoke

Cuba's crop is under severe strain; the rest of the industry's fields went largely unreported. What the published record says about the leaf you will smoke in 2027.

2026-09-25

The Ritual

The Long Smoke: An Argument for Slowness

The cigar is the last luxury that cannot be hurried, streamed, or summarized. In defense of the unhurried hour.

2026-09-25

The Lounge

The Herf Calendar

London to Las Vegas, Tampa to Dortmund: the cigar world's gatherings from autumn 2026 through 2027, with each event's status marked honestly.

2026-09-24

The Lounge

The Humidor at Home

A humidor is a small climate, and climates need tending. The storage science for the home smoker: numbers, wood, seasoning, and beetles.

2026-09-24

The Vintage

The Auction Block: Where Vintage Cigars Find Their Price

From London salerooms to online bidding rooms, a small but serious market decides what rarity is worth. A tour of the houses that handle it.

2026-09-24

The Vintage

The Price of Smoke: Building the 2026 Market Index

Nobody agrees how big the premium cigar market is, so we are building the index ourselves. Here is what the public numbers say, and how we will measure what they miss.

2026-09-24

The Vintage

The Fake Band Trade: Inside the War on Counterfeit Cigars

Holograms, UV ink, tamper-proof seals, seized shipping containers. The fight against fake Cubans is an arms race, and the counterfeiters keep up.

2026-09-24

The Index

The State of the Leaf 2026: The Survey Begins

No public dataset describes the premium cigar industry as a whole. This winter we field the first annual survey of makers, retailers, and smokers. Here is what it will measure, and why.

2026-09-24

The Ritual

The First Cigar

Start mild, start small, and buy from someone who knows the humidor. The beginner's guide to your first cigar, with editorial authority instead of retailer copy.

2026-09-23

The Ritual

Building a Palate

Tasting is a method, not a gift. The cold draw, the thirds, the retrohale, and the vocabulary to describe what you find.

2026-09-23

The Ritual

Pairing, the Cigar Way

Coffee, chocolate, and food, matched from the cigar's side of the table. Harmony or contrast, but never a contest.

2026-09-23

The Lounge

Inside the Casa del Habano

More than 140 stores in 65 countries, one green-and-gold sign, and the strictest retail standard in the cigar world. Inside the franchise.

2026-09-23

The Lounge

The Third Place

Home is the first place, work the second. The cigar lounge may be the most perfect third place ever built, and that is why it endures.

2026-09-23

The Vintage

The Science of Rest: What Time Does to a Cigar

Aging refines a cigar; it does not rescue one. What the published record actually says about the sick period, the sweet spot, and the limits of patience.

2026-09-23

The Makers

Davidoff: From Havana to the White Label

In 1989 Zino Davidoff burned more than 100,000 of his own cigars. The break with Cuba remade the brand, and the white band survived it all.

2026-09-22

The Makers

The New Hondurans

Beyond the giants, a generation of Honduran makers is building houses of its own: in Danli, at Las Lomas, and in a factory that spent twenty years rolling for everyone else.

2026-09-22

The Makers

The Women Rolling

The cigar was long a male preserve. At Havana's El Laguito factory, nine out of ten workers are women, and the hands behind the bench have a story of their own.

2026-09-22

The Ritual

The Toast and the Draw

Three steps, one golden rule, and forty-five seconds of patience. Lighting is the most critical variable in the smoke, and the flame should never touch the leaf.

2026-09-22

The Ritual

The Herf

Ninety minutes, five friends, one box: the herf is the last dinner party that requires nothing but time.

2026-09-22

The Ritual

The Unwritten Rules

Every lounge runs on a code, and almost none of it is written down. The etiquette, as the published guides and the old masters agree on it.

2026-09-22

The Lounge

The Great Lounges of London

St James's to Canary Wharf: the rooms where London smokes, from a shop that has stood since 1787 to heated terraces above the Thames.

2026-09-22

The Leaf

The Cibao Valley: Dominican Tobacco's Fertile Heart

In the valley around Santiago, the Dominican Republic grows the mild, elegant leaf that defines its cigars.

2026-09-21

The Leaf

Honduras: The Quiet Power

The Jamastrán Valley rolls a huge share of the world's cigars and asks for none of the credit.

2026-09-21

The Leaf

Cameroon: Africa's Wrapper

From a rainforest on the Cameroon border comes what the Meerapfel family describes as the most expensive wrapper leaf in the industry.

2026-09-21

The Leaf

Ecuador: Cloud-Grown Leaf

On the equator, the clouds do the work that shade cloth does elsewhere, and the wrapper industry noticed.

2026-09-21

The Makers

Padrón: Three Generations

A $600 start in Little Havana, a burned factory, an embargo, and the most consistent name in cigars. The Padrón family story, from the public record.

2026-09-21

The Makers

Fuente: The House That Fire Could Not Kill

A Tampa factory in 1924, Nicaragua in 1979, two warehouses in 2011, Warehouse #3 in 2023. The story of Arturo Fuente is the story of a family that keeps rebuilding.

2026-09-21

The Makers

Casa 1910: The Mexican Leaf, Taken Seriously

Few houses roll in Mexico. Casa 1910 built its whole identity there: a Mexican puro, a revolution for a namesake, and a blender with a Habanos Academy diploma.

2026-09-21

The Ritual

The Four Cuts

Guillotine, punch, V-cut, and the bite you should never take. The first decision of every smoke is also the only one you cannot undo.

2026-09-21

The Leaf

Vuelta Abajo: The Benchmark Leaf

In Cuba's far west, a forty-thousand-hectare district grows the tobacco every other region is measured against.

2026-09-20

The Leaf

Estelí: After the Boom

Nicaragua's northern highlands survived revolution, expropriation, and embargo to become the handmade cigar's capital.

2026-09-20

The Makers

The Torcedor's Hands

Every premium cigar passes through nine operations and a single pair of hands. An anatomy of how a cigar is built, from filler to cap.

2026-09-20

The Makers

The Blender's Library

A blend is not invented. It is built, leaf by leaf and harvest by harvest, from a library of aged tobacco. Inside the blender's craft.

2026-09-20