Quintero (cigar)

From Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

Quintero
Product typeCigar
OwnerImperial Brands
Produced byHabanos S.A.
CountryCuba
Introduced1924; 100 years ago (1924)
Related brandsCohiba
Montecristo
Romeo y Julieta
Websitehabanos.com/quintero
Carcinogenicity: IARC group 1

Quintero is a cigar brand owned by British conglomerate Imperial Brands. The cigars are produced in Cuba by Habanos S.A., a state-owned tobacco company.

History

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The Quintero cigar brand was created as Quintero y Hermanos or Quintero and Brothers, when Agustín Quintero and his four brothers opened a small cigar factory in the town of Cienfuegos, Cuba in 1924 and began producing a handmade cigar.

Quintero is popular in Cuba and in Spain. By the 1940s, Quintero y Hermanos had opened a larger rolling factory in Havana, and had begun using prime tobaccos from the Vuelta Abajo region.

It the early 1960s, after Fidel Castro nationalized the Cuban cigar industry,[1] Quintero became a primarily machine-made cigar, and most of the handmade sizes were dropped in favor of machine-made or hand-finished cigars using short filler tobaccos. For many years, Quintero was the only Cuban machine-made brand to be globally marketed by Habanos SA.

In 2002, as part of a marketing strategy to promote Cuban cigars, the Cuban government marketing organization, Habanos S.A. chose to discontinue machine-made cigars in favor of handmade versions.

References

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  1. ^ Savona, David, The Exodus, Cigar Aficionado, Nov/Dec. 2002
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