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Real Fábrica de Tabacos Partagás
Havana
The 1845 works behind the Capitolio, its rolling galleries upstairs.
Tobacco & cigars
The soil, the valleys and the houses behind the Havana cigar
Cuban tobacco is a question of ground before it is a question of craft. A narrow belt of red, sandy, well-drained soil in the far west — the Vuelta Abajo — produces leaf that has been treated as the world's finest for two centuries, and the rest of the island grows tobacco that is graded against it. The plant is set out in the dry season, picked leaf by leaf over several passes, and cured in the pitched wooden barns you see standing in every field.
The valleys are the visit. A working vega will show you the seedbeds, the field and the curing barn in one walk, and the barns are open where the crop is drying between roughly November and March.
Where it comes from
Vuelta Abajo
Pinar del Río →The premier terroir, and the only one whose name appears on a box. San Juan y Martínez and San Luis are its two working centres.
Municipalities: San Juan y Martínez, San Luis, Pinar del Río
Viñales
Pinar del Río →The valley UNESCO listed in 1999 partly for its traditional agriculture: tobacco still grown by hand between the mogotes.
Municipalities: Viñales
Open on the mapPartido
Artemisa →The shade-grown district near Havana, worked for wrapper leaf rather than filler.
Municipalities: Artemisa, San Antonio de los Baños
Open on the mapVuelta Arriba
Villa Clara →The central belt around Remedios, the island's second tobacco country and much older as a settled district than the west.
Municipalities: Remedios, Camajuaní, Placetas
Open on the mapPlaces to visit
Real, mapped places where the work happens — factories, curing barns, estates, quarries. Each one opens on the atlas map at its own coordinate.
Fábrica de Tabacos Francisco Donatien
Pinar del Río
A town factory in the capital of Vuelta Abajo, its floor open to visitors.
Centro Cultural Casa del Veguero
Viñales
A grower's yard and curing barn on the valley road.
Escogida de Tabaco - Ruta del tabaco
San Juan y Martínez
The sorting shed on the tobacco route through Vuelta Abajo.
Fábrica de Tabaco Romeo y Julieta
Havana
The Havana works of the house founded in 1875.
Fábrica de Tabacos Constantino Pérez Carrodegua
Santa Clara
Vuelta Arriba's own factory, in the middle of Santa Clara.
Where to buy it
Counters, markets and shops you can actually walk into, with the town each one is in.
Mercado Artesanal Industrial Miramar
Havana
Havana's craft market — the island's biggest souvenir floor.
Museums & things to do
The museums, trails and music halls that grew up around it.
Mural de la Prehistoria
Viñales
The painted cliff face above the tobacco fields.
Antiguo Almacén de la Madera y el Tabaco
Havana
Live music and long tables in the old harbour tobacco warehouse.
Places from OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL). Information only — CubaAtlas maps these places, it does not represent or transact with any of them.
The historic houses
Founding dates and the town each house started in. Later ownership is another subject; this is where they began.
Por Larrañaga
1834founded · Havana
The oldest house still trading under its own name.
Punch
1840founded · Havana
Named for the London magazine, and aimed at its readers.
H. Upmann
1844founded · Havana
Founded by a German banker who shipped cigars to his clients in cedar boxes.
Partagás
1845founded · Havana
Its Havana factory has worked on the same street behind the Capitolio since the 1840s.
Hoyo de Monterrey
1865founded · San Juan y Martínez
Named for a single vega — the hoyo, the hollow, where the best leaf grows.
Romeo y Julieta
1875founded · Havana
Took its name from the play and, for decades, had a reader reciting it on the factory floor.
La Gloria Cubana
1885founded · Havana
A small house that never grew, which is much of its reputation.
Montecristo
1935founded · Havana
Named after the Dumas novel the factory readers were working through at the time.