Macanudo: From Jamaica to America's Best-Selling Mild Cigar

“Macanudo” is a Spanish word for something excellent. It is a fitting name for the brand with which many American smokers lit their first cigar.

A small brand in Jamaica

Before it was famous, Macanudo was a little-known label made at the Temple Hall factory in Jamaica and sold mostly in the United Kingdom. In 1961 Edgar Cullman and a group of investors bought General Cigar, and late in that decade the company bought Temple Hall. Sources disagree on the year: some say 1968 and others 1969.

A Cuban in Jamaica

To develop the brand, General Cigar relied on Ramón Cifuentes, of the family that made Partagás in Havana and that left Cuba after the revolution. In 1971 General Cigar introduced Macanudo as a brand of its own.

Its signature was the Connecticut shade wrapper, a light café color that the company grew in the Connecticut Valley. According to Cullman, they developed their own process in Jamaica to cure and age that wrapper, and that is where the smooth, creamy flavor of the Café line comes from.

King of the nineties

The bet paid off. Before Cigar Aficionado magazine was born in 1992, Macanudo was already the largest premium cigar brand in the United States. In 2000 the Jamaican factory closed and production moved to the Dominican Republic.

Today General Cigar is part of Scandinavian Tobacco Group, after passing through the hands of Swedish Match, and has its North American headquarters in Richmond, Virginia. Alongside the classic Café, the brand has darker and stronger lines, such as the Maduro and the Inspirado family.

Why it matters

Macanudo proves that a mild cigar can make history too. For many smokers it was the way into the world of cigars, and its Connecticut wrapper shaped the taste of a whole generation.

Some dates from the early years change depending on the source. We say so where they disagree.