A Brief History of the Cigar

Nobody knows for sure when the tobacco plant was first cultivated, but there is little doubt about where. The native people of the American continent were undoubtedly the first not only to grow, but to smoke the plant, which probably first came from the Yucatan peninsula, Mexico. It didn't come to the attention of the rest of the world until Christopher Columbus's momentous voyage of 1492.

The word tobacco, some say, was a corruption of Tobago, the name of a Caribbean island. Others claim it comes from the Tabasco province of Mexico. Cohiba, a word used by the Taino Indians of Cuba was thought to mean tobacco, but now is considered to have referred specifically to cigars. The word cigar originated from sikar, the Mayan word for smoking.

Although the first tobacco plantations were set up in Virginia in 1612 and Maryland in 1631, tobacco was smoked only in pipes in the American colonies. The cigar itself is thought not to have arrived until after 1762 when Israel Putnam, an American general in the Revolutionary War, returned from Cuba after he survived a shipwreck during a British expedition against Cuba. He came back to his home in Connecticut with a selection of Havana cigars and Cuban tobacco seeds. Before long, cigar factories were set up in the Hartford area. Production of the leaves started in the 1820s, and Connecticut tobacco today provides some of the best wrapper leaves to be found outside Cuba. By the early 19th century, not only were Cuban cigars being imported into the United States, domestic production was also taking off.

Cigars were originally sold in bundles covered with pigs' bladders, along with a pod of vanilla to improve the smell. Then came the use of large chests, holding up to 10,000 cigars. In 1830, the banking firm of H. Upmann started shipping cigars to its directors in London in sealed cedar boxes stamped with the bank's emblem. When the bank decided to go full-scale into the cigar business, the cedar box took off as a form of packaging for all the major Havana brands and all handmade cigars. Cedar helps to prevent cigars from drying out and furthers the maturing process.

The idea of using colorful lithographic labels, now used for all handmade brands wherever they come from, started when Ramon Allones, a Galician immigrant to Cuba, initiated it for the brand he started in 1837. As the industry grew in the mid-19th century, so did the need for clear brand identification. Paper, usually colored, is glued to the interior of the box and is also used to cover the cigars it contains. After the box is filled and checked, it is nailed shut and sealed with a green and white label (a custom dating from 1912) to guarantee that the cigars are genuine Havanas. The practice of using labels (usually with similar colors and wording) to seal the box continues today for most handmade brands, Cuban or not.

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