Montecristo (cigar)

Montecristo (Spanish pronunciation: [monteˈkɾisto]) is the name of two brands of premium cigars, one produced in Cuba for Habanos SA, the Cuban state-owned tobacco company, and the other produced in La Romana, Dominican Republic for the Franco-Spanish tobacco monopoly Altadis SA, a division of Imperial Tobacco.

In July 1935, Alonso Menéndez purchased the Particulares Factory, makers of the popular Particulares brand and the lesser-known Byron. Immediately after its acquisition, he created a new brand named Montecristo.

The name for the brand was inspired by the Alexandre Dumas, père novel The Count of Monte Cristo, which was supposedly a very popular choice among the torcedores (cigar rollers) in their factory to have read by the lector on the rolling floor. The now-famous Montecristo logo, consisting of a triangle of six swords surrounding a fleur-de-lis, was designed by John Hunter Morris and Elkan Co. Ltd., the brand's British distributor.

In July 1936, Menéndez founded a new firm with a partner, naming it Menéndez, García y Cía. With the growing success of the Montecristo brand, the firm purchased the faltering H. Upmann Factory from J. Frankau SA in 1937 and transferred the production of Montecristo from the Particulares Factory to H. Upmann, which continued to be the home of the Montecristo brand after the Revolution. Some sources have incorrectly stated that the original name of the cigar brand was H. Upmann Montecristo Selection, but the fact that the brand was founded by Menéndez in 1935 and his firm did not acquire H. Upmann until 1937 bears out the original name of Montecristo. The original line had only five numbered sizes, with a tubed cigar added during the 1940s, but otherwise remained unchanged until after nationalization in 1960.

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