From El Laguito to Behike, from myth to market, and why the 60th anniversary must be about the cigar itself
Hello, dear reader,
As we just celebrated 60 years of Cohiba, and since it’s been the talk of the cigar town because of the festival next month I invite you to take another look at Cohiba with me.
“There are many great cigar brands in Cuba. There is only one Cohiba.”
That may sound like a slogan, but for many aficionados it’s a reality. It’s simply the conclusion some cigar smokers reach after enough years of smoking, enough comparisons, and enough time spent watching how one name continues to dominate the cigar world. Cohiba has become the reference point. People admire it, chase it, criticize it, fake it, collect it, and, sometimes, simply smoke it quietly for themselves, fully aware of the weight the name carries.
And now, with its 60th anniversary approaching, it feels like the right moment to look at Cohiba as what it really is, a story of tobacco, decisions, turning points, ambition, and contradictions.
Cohiba did not begin as a commercial brand. It began as a private project.
In the early 1960s, Fidel Castro was introduced to a cigar made by a little-known torcedor named Eduardo Rivera. We all know the story with the driver handing Fidel Castro the cigar that would become the Cohiba Lancero. The cigar was different. Smoother. More refined. More elegant. It quickly became Castro’s personal smoke, and soon, a small production was set aside for the Cuban leadership and for diplomatic gifts.
Cohiba got its name from Celia Sánchez, if you are not familiar with this name you should look it up, it might bear more weight than “Che Guevara”. Cohiba is what the tainos called the ritual of smoking tobacco, a shamanistic ritual which the tainos believed would connect them with spirits.
El Laguito, a former colonial mansion on the outskirts of Havana, became the home of Cohiba. After the revolution, the building was first used to house students, before eventually being transformed into the cigar factory we know today.
It was never meant to be a factory in the industrial sense. It was a workshop, almost a studio. A place where only selected rollers worked, where standards were unusually strict, and where production was never about volume. Even today, El Laguito remains the symbolic heart of Cohiba, although production has long since expanded to other factories such as Fernando Pérez Germán. Still, when people talk about “true Cohiba,” they are usually, consciously or not, thinking about El Laguito.
What also set Cohiba apart from the very beginning was not only where it was rolled, but how its tobacco was treated.
Cohiba is the only Cuban brand whose filler leaves undergo three fermentations. The first two are similar to other premium Habanos: initial fermentation of the raw leaf, then a second fermentation after classification. But Cohiba adds a third stage: an additional fermentation in barrels, specifically for the filler leaves. This is not a romantic story invented for marketing. It is a real, labor-intensive process that further reduces ammonia, refines texture, and deepens aromatic complexity. It is one of the main reasons why Cohiba, when it is at its best, has that unmistakable sense of polish and composure. I can say that I had many outstandingly smooth Cuban cigars, but when you enjoy a well rolled aged Cohiba you can actually tell the difference.
Equally important is where the tobacco comes from. Cohiba uses leaves from the finest zones of Vuelta Abajo, particularly San Juan y Martínez and San Luis, although the exact fields are never publicly disclosed. The internal selection process is famously severe. What is often described as “the selection of the selection” is not an exaggeration. A very large percentage of tobacco never even makes it into Cohiba blends.
For many years, this extraordinary cigar existed only as a private object. That changed in 1982, when Cohiba was finally commercialized, initially for the Spanish market.
The first public lineup was relatively small, only Panetelas, Lanceros, and Coronas Especiales.
The Lancero deserves special attention. Long, slender, elegant, and brutally difficult to roll well, it remains one of the most technically demanding vitolas in Cuba. It also remains one of the most honest. A Lancero leaves no place to hide. Construction, combustion, blending.. everything is exposed.
Then came the second great turning point.
In 1992, to mark the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the Americas, Cohiba launched the Línea 1492, later renamed the Siglo series. This was a strategic and philosophical expansion. For the first time, Cohiba offered a structured range that allowed smokers to enter the brand gradually: Siglo I through Siglo V, each with its own personality and place.
And then, in 2002, came the Siglo VI.
The Siglo VI changed Cohiba’s global footprint. It proved that a modern, relatively large, approachable format could still be unmistakably Cohiba. It became one of the most successful Cuban cigars ever made and, for many smokers, their first real step into the brand. It also opened up the brand to larger ring gauge cigars which were becoming more and more popular. Vitola de galera Cañonazo - 52x150
Personally, I’ve always felt that the Siglo IV is the perfect everyday Cohiba. But there is no doubt that the Siglo VI is the cigar that truly globalized the brand.
Cohiba continued to evolve. In 2007, the Maduro 5 line was introduced, bringing a darker, more aged wrapper profile into the brand’s universe. The Maduro line of Cohiba is also full bodied and great for aficionados that want to enjoy a stronger cigar.
Another important step in the brand’s evolution came with the introduction of limited and special releases, particularly starting with the Cohiba 1966 in 2011, followed by the Robustos Supremos in 2014 and the Talismán in 2017. Larger, bolder, and unapologetically modern, it signaled that Cohiba could also be contemporary, powerful, and deliberately luxurious. Some of the anticipation for this year's celebration I think might be linked to what happened 10 years ago when Cohiba turned 50 years old and the releases were beyond expectations. Two cigars marked that moment and since I never had the chance to enjoy them I can only imagine how amazing they might be, especially today.
The Cohiba 50 Aniversario (vitola de galera Grandiosos, 60 × 178 mm, with 50 humidors of 50 cigars produced) and the Cohiba Majestuoso 1966 (vitola de galera Majestuosos, 58 × 150 mm, with 1,966 humidors of 20 cigars produced) are two of the most famous examples. The Majestuoso, in particular, has become notorious for being extensively counterfeited. The factory responsible did not simply fake a single humidor or a small batch, they reproduced the entire release. As a result, there are counterfeit boxes with seemingly correct numbering that are extremely difficult to distinguish from the genuine ones. A small typo on one of the inserts is what gave it away. I am taking this opportunity to show my appreciation to my friend L.B. (Habano News) for investing his time and bringing all this information to the public.
But the most radical transformation was still to come.
For decades, insiders spoke about medio tiempo as a rarity, a leaf that appears at the very top of some tobacco plants, above ligero, in only a small percentage of crops. Thicker, oilier, richer, and stronger, it was usually blended away in tiny quantities or not used at all.
In 2010, Cohiba made medio tiempo the heart of a new line: Behike.
The name Behike also has roots in Taino rituals. As earlier I was telling you about the Cohiba ritual, well the behike is a spiritual leader and the one that performs these rituals and provides guidance, balance, and spiritual healing to the members of the community.
The Behike BHK 52, 54, and 56 instantly became the most coveted regular-production cigars in the world. Not because of marketing alone, but because the concept was real. Medio tiempo brings a different kind of depth: more structure, more intensity, more gravity. It is also incredibly scarce. This is one of the fundamental reasons why Behike production will always be limited, no matter how high demand becomes.
I remember very clearly wishing, years ago, that I would one day be able to enjoy a Behike. When that finally happened, I understood why it had become what it had become. And for me, the Behike 54 is a complete and remarkable experience.
Another important moment was the launch of the Cohiba 55 Aniversario took place in Havana in September 2021, which already made it feel different. It wasn’t February, it wasn’t the Festival del Habano, and yet it had all the elements of one. Even though, officially, it was “just” a launch, the atmosphere was that of a full-scale celebration. I was there, and I still have many strong memories from those days. It felt like Havana had briefly shifted back into festival mode after the pandemic, the gatherings, the conversations, the shared excitement, the sense that something important was happening around Cohiba. The cigar itself was clearly designed to be a statement, but for me, what stayed just as much were the moments around it and the feeling that Cohiba was once again marking time in its own way.
Now, we have to talk about the difficult part, it can’t be all good, can it?
Cohiba today is expensive, scarce, and more counterfeited than any other cigar brand in the world. The level of forgery is staggering. In some markets, fake Cohibas likely outnumber real ones. This is the dark side of being the most famous name in the industry. Fake Cohibas are being sold in official cigar stores, even!
Add to this the realities of modern Cuban production: pressure on supply, uneven availability, and, yes, occasional quality inconsistency. No brand is immune to this. But no brand is judged more harshly when something goes wrong than Cohiba.
Then there is the market itself. Cohiba is no longer just something people smoke. It is something people own. Trade. Store. Speculate on. The gap between the smoking value of a Cohiba and its financial value has never been wider.
All of this creates frustration. And also obsession.
Which brings us to the 60th anniversary.
This is not just another birthday, or at least I don’t see it as such. It is a moment of truth.
A chance for Cohiba to show that beneath all the symbolism, all the market madness, all the mythology, it is still, at heart, a brand built on tobacco, meticulous fermentation, artistic blending, and perfect craftsmanship.
I feel like Cohiba does not need to prove that it is famous, I don’t care about a fancy event where they launch another instrument for speculation. I want Habanos S.A. to use this moment and prove that Cohiba is still great.
If the 60th anniversary delivers something truly great and not just something impressive on the surface, then Cohiba will remain the most important name in the cigar world for the right reasons, because people enjoy it, not because people trade it. In the end, a cigar only proves its value once it has been lit, and it is the aficionados, not the speculators, who keep Cohiba’s status alive. At times, it has felt as if certain releases, like the Behike 58, were more about the event and the spectacle than about the cigar itself. I hope the 60th anniversary will be different, that it will be remembered first for how good the cigar is and why, not for how it was presented.
I’ll be there. Curious and hopeful. And no matter how mercantile this release may become, no matter how much speculation and trading it will inevitably generate, I still find myself wishing for something simpler and more honest, a Cohiba created first and foremost for the people who actually smoke these cigars. A cigar meant to be enjoyed, remembered, and talked about for what it is in the ashtray not for what it might become in a safe or on a price list. That, in the end, is what I hope the 60th anniversary will be about.
Wishing you rich flavors and good company, until we meet again.