Buying Cigars In Havana
You’ve finally arrived in Cuba and your pockets are stuffed with pesos. One thing and one thing only is on your mind: cigars. And you’re ready to spend some serious coin. You can hardly contain your excitement as you approach the nearest La Casa del Habano shop. Which cigars are you going to buy? How many boxes? Montecristo No. 2? Cohiba Siglo VI? The possibilities make you pick up your pace, but when you walk through the door and B-line straight for the walk-in humidor, you find . . . a lot of empty shelves. And a lot of petit coronas. Some of the Cohibas you manage to spot are approaching $100 per cigar. Confusion and panic start to bubble up from your gut. What’s happening here?
Cigar Aficionado visited every Casa del Habano shop in Havana during a visit to Cuba earlier this year, save for the one at the Conde de Villanueva hotel, which was closed at the time. We stopped into a few Habanos Specialist shops as well. The findings across Havana’s cigar retail landscape were inconsistent. Some locations were better stocked than others. However, no stores even came close to having everything. Occasionally, we’d catch a shop when shipments from Habanos had just arrived. Other times, the inventory was lean. And single-cigar options weren’t anywhere near what they used to be. The one thing that was consistent: prices have gone up. In some cases, way up.
In early 2020, before the pandemic spread, a Montecristo No. 2, one of the most revered cigars in the world, cost only 9.65 CUC in Havana, the equivalent of $9.65. (Today, all Cuban cigars are priced in U.S. dollars. See “Show Me The Money” on page 65, for more information.) Four years later, the price has more than doubled, to $21.50. If that sounds egregious, a Cohiba Siglo I, which is a tiny petit corona, will set you back more than $30. Compare that to $6.90 in 2020. That’s more than quadruple the price. And the highly sought-after Cohiba Siglo VI? Those cañonazo-sized cigars used to cost the equivalent of $17.90 each in 2020. Today, they go for a little more than $100. Simply put, buying cigars on the cheap in Havana is a thing of the past. Cohibas and Trinidads are especially expensive. The good news is that not every cigar in Cuba will drain your savings . There are reasonably priced cigars if you can find them.
At the Casa del Habano in the Meliá Habana hotel, the first thing we noticed is that the normally loaded walk-in humidor was closed—completely empty and locked. Next to the , they had open boxes of Cohiba Siglo VI ($101.65), Cohiba Robustos ($72.90), Cohiba Lanceros ($88.33) and Cohiba Maduro 5 Secretos ($34.85) for sale as singles. Choose anything else and you had to buy the box. Complete boxes were stored in glass cabinets along the side of the store and consisted mostly of small sizes, three-packs and five-packs. It was a bit stunning to see a five-pack of Cohiba Siglo II coronas retail for $174.25. At first glance, we thought it was a mistake.
While there were no large-format Montecristos here, this Casa had plenty of smaller Montes. They weren’t nearly as expensive as the Cohibas, but still notably more than they were in 2020. The little No. 5 cost $38.25 per pack of five (or $7.65 each) and the slightly larger No. 4 went for $53 per five-pack, which works out to $10.60 each. That’s nearly twice as much as it was four years ago when it only cost 5.55 CUCs.
If you’re willing to go off-script a bit, an excellent bargain can be had with a house-rolled cigar. Many cigar shops have them, often with the roller assembling the cigars right in front of you. For a mere $5.30 you can get a robusto rolled by Arnaldo Ovalles Brioñes, former manager of the El Laguito factory, home of Cohiba. These robustos are exclusive to the Casa at Meliá Habana, and while no one claims that this is a Cohiba Robusto, the price is simply unassailable, regardless of the blend.
The cigar shop down the street at the Hotel Comodoro is not a Casa del Habano, but is one that we have found to be a welcoming and worthwhile destination for cigar lovers. The shop had no large Cohibas but plenty of small-format coronas and petit coronas of all brands. The small selection of single cigars for sale included Montecristo No. 2 ($21.50), Partagás Serie P No. 2 ($19.80) and Bolivar Royal Coronas ($16.35).
By far, the best selection of singles we found was at the Casa del Habano in the Habana Libre hotel. That shop has always been well stocked, and while the humidor was far from full, its selection of singles was unrivaled. It was the only store in Havana at the time that sold Partagás Lusitanias ($26.85), Hoyo de Monterrey Double Coronas ($26.80), Cohiba Pirámides Extras ($116.85) and Cohiba 55 Aniversario Edición Limitada 2021—the most expensive cigar we encountered at $330. No stores, however, offered any Cohiba Behikes. If they had any, they were not on display and reserved for special customers, a practice that is common in Havana.
The iconic Partagás shop, formerly located behind Havana’s capital building, is now a few blocks away, kitty-corner from the famed El Floridita Bar in Old Havana. Compared to the original building, the exterior is nondescript, but inside it retains some of the old charm with its familiar black-and-white checkerboard floors and a mezzanine-level seating area. On one particular visit, the store had full boxes of Montecristo No. 2s, Cohiba Robustos and Partagás Serie D No. 4 cigars. The Serie D No. 4 was a cigar that retailed for 6.95 CUCs in 2020 and now costs $17.60. Shelves were also stocked with Romeo y Julieta Short Churchills and cigars from Romeo’s Línea de Oro line.
Some of the larger cigars turned up in unexpected places. In all our travels, the only time we came across a Churchill-sized H. Upmann Sir Winston was at the cigar shop connected to the H. Upmann factory. No boxes were available, but singles of the cigar sold for $23.20 each. Similarly, Cohiba Esplendidos could only be found at the airport, offered in three-packs that retailed for $356.25, or $118.75 per cigar, approximately five times the price it was four years ago.
By far, the most depleted shop was the Casa del Habano at Quinta Avenida, a free-standing smoking destination that resides among the mansions and embassies of Havana’s Miramar section on 5th Avenue. On the day of our visit, the shelves were mostly empty, save for more small-format cigars, however it appeared that boxes were being delivered from Habanos, so it’s possible the shop was replenished shortly afterward.
Despite frustrating shortages and spotty inventory, a few cigars could curiously be found at almost every Casa in Havana. Boxes of Punch Punch ($395 per box, $15.80 each), Ramon Allones Specially Selected ($406.25 per box, $16.25 each) and Juan Lopez Selección No. 1 ($353.50 per box, $14.14 each) were everywhere. Compared with the cost of the larger brands, prices for these smokes seemed reasonable. The only larger Cohiba on display at nearly every store was the Cohiba Siglo de Oro, a limited-edition cigar made to celebrate the Year of the Rabbit. Its exorbitant price—$4,500—may explain why they were sitting on the shelves.
A word of warning. In the busier parts of Havana, hustlers and street urchins are waiting outside the cigar shops to poach customers before they walk in with promises of Cohibas and other brands at cheaper prices. Avoid them. You will most likely not be getting legitimate product. These peddlers have stolen official packaging materials from various factories and filled them with cigars they’ve made themselves. It’s an old con, but one that often entices tourists looking for a bargain. Prices in Cuba are set by the government, so every cigar will cost the same no matter the shop. Back-alley Bolivars and questionable Cohibas are sucker bets. Cigars are more expensive than ever, but at least you’ll know they’re authentic if you stick to the official Casas.
So why have cigars become so expensive post-pandemic? There are a few reasons. Firstly, prices will rise naturally over time. Secondly, global inflation played a part. But the major factor happened in 2022 when Habanos announced that all Cohiba and Trinidad cigars were going to be universally priced in accordance with the Hong Kong dollar, no matter the market. That included Havana, which put an end to the discounts that cigar enthusiasts typically enjoyed when visiting Cuba. Cohibas and Trinidads were always more expensive than other Cuban brands, but the rift has grown to absurd proportions.
The focus on box sales at Casa del Habano shops didn’t seem to curtail buying. On one occasion at the Palco hotel’s Casa del Habano, an employee wheeled in a hotel luggage cart stacked with dozens of boxes. “Are you receiving a shipment” we asked. “Oh no,” responded the woman behind the counter. “Those are for that gentleman sitting over there.” She pointed to a young Asian man sitting with two young Asian women. He was opening a box of Romeo y Julieta Cupidos, a new cigar that retails for $1,540 per 20-count box.
Another thing to the next time you shop for cigars in Havana: cash won’t help you. Hard currency used to be welcome, but is now forbidden. In an attempt to closely monitor every last cigar transaction, the Casa del Habano shops are only accepting plastic. Should your American credit cards reject a charge (American Express will not work at all, but there has been some success with Visa and MasterCard, even those tied to American banks), you can buy a debit card from the bank, which the cigar stores will accept. And be sure to keep your receipts. You might get stopped at your airport departure by an official demanding proof that you bought your cigars through legitimate channels, not off the street. Without the receipts, you risk having your Cuban cigars confiscated in Cuba. After spending so much money, wouldn’t that be the ultimate irony?
