Joya de Nicaragua

Joya de Nicaragua is the oldest premium cigar factory in Nicaragua. It was founded in Estelí in 1968, as the Nicaragua Cigar Company, by two Cuban exiles, Juan Francisco Bermejo and Simón Camacho, who also started the Camacho brand in Miami. Its cigars were among the first premium cigars from Nicaragua sold in the United States.

The factory was badly damaged in the fighting of the 1978–79 revolution. In the 1980s it was run by the state, and the U.S. trade embargo on Nicaragua, imposed in 1985, cut it off from American shops. In 1994 Dr. Alejandro Martínez Cuenca bought the company and rebuilt it. It is still made in Estelí.

Lines include Clásico, Cabinetta, Antaño, Antaño Dark Corojo, Celebración, Número Uno, and Cuatro Cinco. Antaño 1970, launched in 2001, is a strong Nicaraguan puro and became the company’s best-known cigar. Celebración and Cabinetta are milder.

Joya de Nicaragua matters because its history follows the history of the Nicaraguan cigar industry: the first factory after the Cuban embargo, the losses of the revolution and the U.S. embargo, and the recovery that made Nicaragua one of the main cigar-making countries.