Smoke Inn Blog Smoke Inn Cigar Talk
A few weeks ago, I wrote about grabbing a taxi to go uptown years ago and finding that Ramon Cifuentes (Cuba’s most famous cigarmaker before the embargo) was my taxi driver!
Well, I’ve started going through all my old papers and collectables and throwing stuff out so I don’t leave a mess for my kids when I kick the bucket… and I ran into this old list from 1958 that detailed all the top Cuban brands and the number of each that were produced that year, and sure enough Ramon Cifuentes Partagas brand was number one!
What was even more amazing was that the number three brand was Flor de Farach, a brand I had never heard of until a banker named Diego Caso arranged for me to import over half a million Farach cigars that had been in storage in Spain for over 20 years after the embargo.
Cuban Cigars Worldwide-1958
Flor de Tabacos Partagas 681,185
H. Upmann 470,300
Flor de Farach 448,020
Romeo y Julieta 417,035
Hoyo de Monterrey 340,795
Montecristo 316,935
Cifuentes 297,555
Fonseca 295,560
Flor de Cano 277,495
Maria Guerrero 271,320
Henry Clay 210,475
Troya 199,925
Here’s some of the documentation I got with the shipment…
AND I still smoke one of these oldies every now and then. Other than the fact that they were made in Cuba before the embargo, I can’t say the cigars have much going for them, but it’s still a unique experience for friends and guests when they come to our house.
Okay… I know you’re gonna say — Lew Rothman doesn’t even have a decent humidor after selling the lions share of humidors in this country for years on end? And he keeps his cigars in this piece of shit box? Well, yes I do, but frankly these Boveda things can make any box a humidor. I shoulda invested with these guys when they first came to see me, what?… 25 years ago???
Yeah, well I guess I also coulda bought Amazon stock when it first came out and was about a dollar… like I always come back to when people talk about me being smart and I tell them what those two characters who used to hang out in front of my fathers’ candy store told me: “Kid, you don’t have to be smart, you just have to outwork them!”
