Cigar Brands
There are a few thousand different brands of handmade cigars that are marketed in the United States. In addition to the national brands, there are also house, regional, local, and other various special and limited brands. There can also be a number of different models and line extensions within a particular brand, boosting the total number of different cigars on the market to well over 10K. Do not confuse brand names with the names given to various sizes of cigars, such as Corona, Robusto or Churchill. Also, the brand name of a cigar is not necessarily the name of the company that makes the cigar. Perhaps the most confusing issue relating to brand names, besides their sheer number and variety, is that two completely different cigars, made by two different companies in two different countries, can have the exact same brand name. Besides flagrant trademark violations and counterfeits, there is another reason for this conundrum. Cuban cigar companies were seized and nationalized by Castro's Communist Government during the Revolution, and Cuban cigars are still being produced and sold under their original brand names. However, the owners of many of those brands fled Cuba, and relocated their cigar companies to other countries, also using their original brand names - which they rightfully owned. Since selling Cuban cigars is still illegal in the United States, only the non-Cuban versions of those original Cuban brands are currently marketed in the U.S. Although you may read about highly rated Cuban cigars in various magazines sold in the United States, those cigars are not the same cigars that you can buy at your local tobacco store, even though they have the same brand name. For example, Cohiba is one of the most recognizable cigar brand names in the world, but a Cuban Cohiba is not the same cigar as a Dominican Cohiba sold by the General Cigar Company. Cohiba was once Castro's favorite brand, but General Cigar owns the trademark to use that brand name in the United States. As an aside, the Cohiba brand was actually established after the Revolution, and was not relocated to another country by Cuban exiles, as were a number of other Cuban brands. Instead of trying to list every brand name of cigars sold in the United States, here are some of the more popular brand names marketed by the two largest cigars companies in the U.S., namely Altadis USA and General Cigar. |
Altadis Cigar Brands
Butera Royal Vintage |
General Cigar Brands
Brioso |