Raymond Pages, a Cuban-Born Cigar Maker, Launches His Own Brand

Raymond Pages Raffo has spent years making cigars that carry other people’s names. Now he is putting his own on the box. Pages Cigars, his new company, launches in November with a first line that is also called Pages Cigars. The company says the name will likely change once more lines join it.

Pages comes from San Luis, in Pinar del Río, Cuba’s best-known tobacco region, where his father and grandfather grew tobacco. He left for Nicaragua at 17 and worked there with AJ Fernández, whose story we told in our Cigar Houses series. In 2019 he opened his own factory, Tabacalera Pages de Nicaragua, where he makes private labels such as BDL, Florida Man and Penn Standard for Cigar Page, a large online retailer that, despite the similar name, has no family ties to him.

The debut blend is all Nicaraguan, wrapper, binder and filler, and is described as medium to full. It comes in boxes of 20 in five sizes:

• Robusto (5½ x 54), $9.98
• Corona (6 x 46), $9.60
• Toro (6 x 52), $10.48
• Gordo (6 x 58), $11.98
• Churchill (7 x 50), $10.98

It is a regular production line. Tabacalera Cigars Family, another Pages family company, will distribute it in the United States, and the cigars are expected in stores in mid-November, in both the U.S. and Europe.