Montecristo

Montecristo is a Cuban cigar brand sold around the world by Habanos S.A. Alonso Menéndez registered the name in Havana in 1935, and José Manuel “Pepe” García joined him the next year. Their company, Menéndez, García y Cía., also owned H. Upmann, and Montecristo was soon made at the H. Upmann factory. The name comes from Alexandre Dumas’s novel The Count of Monte Cristo, which the factory’s reader read aloud to the rollers.

The first Montecristos came in five sizes, numbered 1 to 5. The Montecristo No. 4, a petit corona, has long been the best-selling Cuban cigar in the world, and the No. 2 is the standard Cuban pyramid. Later additions include the large Montecristo A, the Edmundo (2004), the Petit Edmundo (2007), the Open line (2009), and Línea 1935. The leaf comes from the Vuelta Abajo region of Pinar del Río. Habanos rates the brand medium to full in strength, and the Open line medium.

Montecristo is one of the best-known Cuban brands, and other Cuban cigars are often compared with it.

Because of the U.S. embargo, Cuban Montecristos cannot legally be sold in the United States. In the United States the Montecristo name belongs to a different company, Altadis U.S.A., part of Tabacalera USA. It sells its own non-Cuban Montecristo, made in the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua with no Cuban tobacco: Montecristo (Dominican). The two cigars share a name and a similar band, but they are different cigars.