This is the Cigar Vishnu Podcast coming to you from the Cigar Vishnu Lounge here in New York City. I'm David Savona from Cigar Vishnu, joined here by Greg Matola. How are you doing, Greg?
SPEAKER_01Doing all right. You know, it looks like we were both in a Cuban kind of mood this afternoon. You look at all these cigars we put out. I chose this uh the Trinidad Cabildos, which was the Edicion Limitada in 2024, so it has a little bit of age on it. And it looks like you were thinking Cuba too.
SPEAKER_00I am thinking Cuba too. I'm smoking a Cohiba Siglo 6, rated 94 points in a recent issue of Cigar Avisionado. Speaking of Cuba, that is the subject of today's episode, and there's a lot going on in Cuba. We'll start first from the cigar side. 2026. Normally we would have gone to the Habanos Festival. Uh, what Habanos Festival? What Habanos Festival. It was a year with no festival, at least no festival for now. The festival was postponed. There is no date set yet for it to happen again. But Cuba has some big issues going on, uh, issues that go far beyond the world of cigars. I can't even keep up with what's going on in the It's changing rapidly, changing on the daily uh as we're speaking right now. It's very uh it's imminent that the uh the U.S. is probably going to indict former Cuban President Raul Castro uh based on the events that happened back in 1996 when Cuba downed two brothers to the rescue planes, resulting in the deaths of four people. I think a lot of people forgot about that. Oh, yeah, but a lot of people have not, too. True. Um that is just one part of what's uh in the news cycle for Cuba. Cuba is going through a protracted energy crisis. The lights are off in Cuba 22 hours a day in most neighborhoods, according to most reports. What's unusual for Cuba is that the people are starting to demonstrate. They're in the streets protesting, they they have no power, they have uh very little to go upon. You don't see a lot of demonstrations in Cuba. It's a very controlled state. Uh the and the Trump administration has made no uh no hint about the fact that they're looking for a change, regime change in Cuba. The head of the CIA has visited Cuba for talks. Um Marco Rubio has spoken out on the regular about uh to the Cuban people, saying that change needs to happen. So there's a lot going on and it's changing very, very quickly.
SPEAKER_01Now, what's Trump saying about the indictment? Does he want uh does he want Castro to turn himself in? Does he want to go the same route as he did with Maduro? I mean, what it what I think he would love for uh uh Castro to turn himself in.
SPEAKER_00I don't think that's realistic. I think uh Is he talking that he's gonna he's gonna go in and and and do to Castro what he did to Maduro? Well, I think that's a possibility. Nobody really knows for sure. Anything is on the table right now. It's a it's a land of great uncertainty. Uh going back to that 1996 event with the shootdown of the brothers to the rescue, that event led to the uh tightening of the U.S. embargo, the Helms Burton Act of 1996, which took the the power of of dropping the embargo out of the hands of the president and put it in the hands of Congress. Not that dropping the embargo is anything that's gonna happen anytime soon given what's what's going on. It seems like Greg, we're such a long way away from where we were ten years ago when there was a thaw in U.S. Cuba relations uh you know under the Obama administration when the embargo still existed, but tourism was very much regular. Oh, I remember.
SPEAKER_01And and I and I remember going from the Banos Festival and bringing cigars home, lots of them, and not having a single worry about anything being confiscated or breaking the law or anything like that.
SPEAKER_00It was quite a different time for Americans traveling to Cuba. Cuba was filled with Americans. You could bring back essentially as many Cuban cigars as you wanted. You could bring cigars back from trips to London, Paris, etc. Cuban cigars were also in very abundant supply. And even though the the people of Cuba who I feel very badly for the people of Cuba and what they're going through right now.
SPEAKER_01Is there still an oil embargo? Uh is that is that's in in in full effect for Cuba as well?
SPEAKER_00It depends who you ask. The U.S. would say there is really no oil embargo, but there there is an oil embargo. Cuba is not getting shipments of oil, but Cuba's energy problems go beyond the fact that they have no oil. Matter of fact, the uh Minister of Energy announced on state television to the Cuban people last week that Cuba was completely out of fuel. I'm gonna give you the quote. I want to make sure I get this cor uh correct. He said, quote, we have absolutely no fuel and absolutely no diesel. So they have no no fuel for planes coming to the island, no fuel for keeping the power plants running. But the problems go beyond the lack of fuel. Even before the fuel was cut off, the the Cuban uh power system is aged, has not been maintained, and the blackouts were happening on on a regular basis. Yeah, even if it was status quo, you were still dealing with a shaky infrastructure anyway. Yeah, almost beyond shaky. Yeah, just a really, uh really uh terrible situation. So, of course, caught up in this whole mess are the people of Cuba who, you know, you and I have both been to Cuba. We we have friends in Cuba. Uh I have no idea how how these ordinary Cuban citizens are able to live under these conditions. I feel I feel bad for them. Been in the homes of of Cuban citizens and uh seen what they have to live with, or more importantly, what they have to live without. I don't know how you re how can you refrigerate your food without power? How could you how could you live in a in a tropical climate without a fan to blow some air on you, let alone air conditioning?
SPEAKER_01It's uh you know, which when you put it that way, it makes me think, okay, this this this cigar festival is trivial. That's the least of their problems. And I guess that's true, but at the same time, that festival always brought in a lot of money for the government, for the healthcare system, for the tourism, just for the economy in general. So so it it really was helpful to um the enrichment of the country.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and whether that where that money went, the the the organizers would say that money would go to the Cuban healthcare system, which obviously would need that money. From a cigar perspective, the the Habanos Festival is incredibly important for people like us who cover the Cuban cigar industry, incredibly important for the retailers from around the world who sell Cuban cigars and the distributors who pass them on to the retailers, and for general fans of Cuban cigars. Some Americans would go to the festival, but it was a largely uh international audience.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'd run into some Americans. I was always surprised at who I'd run into there, or who I'd run into who I actually knew. It's like, the heck are you doing here?
SPEAKER_00And you know, people would always ask what's the festival like, and they'd want to compare it to the other cigar festivals like Pro Cigar or Poro Sabor. A lot different. A lot of different.
SPEAKER_01I mean, there are similarities, but there are major differences as well. Because with the Nicaragua festival and Dominican festival, one ticket, if if if you're coming in um as a consumer, as a retailer, as an American, and it's it's mostly Americans who go to that. They're international, but it's mostly American. One ticket gets you access to everything. Whereas with the Habanos festival, it is far more international affair. And you have to buy different tickets for different events. There is no kind of one general admission ticket to to everything.
SPEAKER_00And that weeklong festival, there would be a night on with some kind of a gathering uh uh themed around uh a cigar brand or brands, and then there'd be a night off where you kind of explore Havana on your own. And I always said that it wasn't as uh organized as, say, the Pro Cigar Festival, which is a wonderful affair where that basically every hour of the day is kind of mapped out for you if you want it to be. Almost the best part of the festival was the gathering of these people from around the world. So you and I would go there and talk to people. One day you'd be talking to somebody from London, someone from Kuwait.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there's some people I'd only see once a year, and it would be at the festival.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00So you would learn all kinds of things about the Cuban cigar industry.
SPEAKER_01But that downtime at the festival is actually one of the keys. Uh it it's it's it's kind of an unwritten rule of the festival. In that downtime, um, it's a big shopping trip. You have all the Casas del Habano around Havana, and people use that time to go shopping. And that is just also distinctly different from the other two festivals. You go to Estelia in Nicaragua or Santiago around Tamboril in Dominican Republic, and there aren't that many shops. And you don't have to go shopping because they they give you so many cigars. I'd say at the Habanos Festival, they give you fewer cigars, but there's a lot of opportunity to stock up on cigars, which goes back to what I was saying before, how this does help enrich the economy. However, the last time I went and the last time you went, which was more recently than I went, shelves were a little bare.
SPEAKER_00A little. They were incredibly bare. So Cuba's had a uh, in addition to all their issues with with energy politics, they've had a problem with with cigar production and cigar supply. Uh the last time I was in Havana, the shops were largely empty. Usually you would go into and and for those who haven't been, uh Havana, uh, as you said, Greg, is a great cigar shopping city, probably one of the greatest cities in the world to traditionally to shop for cigars.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you have both Casas del Habano, Casa de Tabaco, all kinds of you know, the Habano specialist shops, and there's it's like almost every block.
SPEAKER_00In good times, in normal times, those shops are filled with cigars, uh, a broad selection of cigars. Traditionally at at good prices, we'll talk more about prices in a bit. Uh, but on in recent trips, my last trip in in 2025, there was very little on the shelves. There was there was some stuff like the higher priced items, like uh some Romeo Linea de Oros and Partigus uh Linea Maestra.
SPEAKER_01I remember seeing the only cohibas I remember seeing were either very small sizes, siglo ones and siglo twos, or that that one that was made, uh I think it was called the siglo de oro, the one that the year of the rabbit, the one for year of the rabbit, which was super expensive, came in this this blue outer cardboard box. So you'd you'd see stacks of those. Nobody was buying those. And then you saw the smaller, smaller size. And that that was that was true for a lot of the brands, Romeo and Monte Cristo, uh, Monty's uh fours and fives, smaller uh Romeo Coronas. But the a Siglo 6, like what you're smoking right now, I saw it at one Casa, one Casa del Habano, and they were not they were only selling it by the stick. By that point, it was over a hundred dollars. Uh so Esplendidos once um uh saw Monte Cristo number twos in one shop, and again just sold by the individual cigar.
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SPEAKER_01There are two issues right now that are really facing that industry. One is high prices, the other one is scarcity. And the and the scarcity happened with hurricane. I'm uh the they always had they always had a hard time for a while now, production keeping up with demand, especially with cohiba. But with Hurricane Ian, if you remember, that demolished all the barn. I think that was 20, that was the end of 2022.
SPEAKER_00Horrible storm went over Pinardel Rio, the prime growing region, didn't strike during uh Cuba's in the hurricane belt. Cuba's uh uh they're you're they're used to dealing with hurricanes, so you don't plant tobacco during hurricane season. But what was destroyed in that hurricane were the curing barns.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you had farms that had maybe two, three, four barns, and the government was very, very slow in rebuilding these barns because they simply did not have the stuff we take for granted: wood, hammers, nails, nails, yeah, saws.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you can't go down to your your your Havana Home Depot and buy a bucket of nails.
SPEAKER_01No, no. So what ended up happening was you had Habanos kind of um looking at certain farms and saying, these are the most important farms, you'll get a barn, this farm will get a barn, this farm will get a maybe. You had three. Well, you only get one, you're gonna have to make do with that. Uh the other farms that maybe didn't have such importance, the government would say, well, grow something else. And and to your point, no tobacco was destroyed. It was but it was the the inability to to um to cure this tobacco.
SPEAKER_00And so if you don't have a curing barn, you you you can't grow the same amount of tobacco.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, if you don't, you you you could have the hugest tobacco fields in the world. If you don't have barns, you don't have tobacco.
SPEAKER_00And we saw some of this firsthand when we went to Pernard El Rio. We spent time with Maximo, who's one of the great uh Cuban tobacco farmers. He was right in ground zero, and he lost, I believe, three. He had three barns on his property. He had one when we went, right? One that had been rebuilt, yeah, and the other two were still on the ground. Uh that severely limits his ability to grow tobacco. And we saw other farms on the way to Maximo's property that were still destroyed. We saw some that had been rebuilt in the kind of an unconventional way with using different materials. You could see uh, you know, Cubans are resilient people. We we you see how they keep the the old cars from the 50s on the streets. So they use tapato or or different building materials to kind of Frankenstein a curing barn back to reality, but that's not the best. The wreckage was still at Robinus Farm.
SPEAKER_01Remember when we went there and there was still this huge pile of just destroyed structure.
SPEAKER_00He told us a story about living through the hurricane. He is no stranger to hurricanes. He knew this was coming. He sent his family away to safety, but he, as is his tradition, he sat out in it under his uh uh gazebo area to ride out the storm. And after a while, he realized that roof was about to come down, and he had to dive into his cinder block house to take cover, grabbed his dog, uh, and he said that like the world was coming down around him. And he had rebuilt one of his barns, but he had another barn that was still wrecked when we last saw his property. And it's really sad to see that so that's one part of the equation, uh, a lack of of the materials, I'm sorry, of the tobacco that you need to make cigars, but they also have a problem with with the people to roll cigars too, don't they?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there was certainly a uh a shortage with the workforce. Now, I know when you have countries like Cuba, these uh these mass exoduses kind of come and go. You have Nicaragua was having the same problem for a while. Uh Honduras was having a little bit of that problem where people were just up and going doing these long treks either up Central America to come to the U.S., or in the case of Cuba, maybe um um maybe going across the water. I don't know what the case is right now. That may, again, it it ebbs and flows. Uh I'm not exactly sure.
SPEAKER_00There's some data. Cuba was traditionally a nation of 11 million people, and numbers are tough to come by, accurate numbers are tough to come by, but some estimates say it's down to 10 or maybe even as few as nine million people. And the the million or two million people who have left that country, which is a significant amount of their population, it's not uh not older people. For the most part, it's younger people, uh, people who would be in the workforce, people who might be uh sitting there making cigars. And the last Cuban cigar factory I went to had a number of vacant benches, and they were training some people to try to uh build back up the production. But not having enough people to make cigars is a problem. Not having the right amount of tobacco to make cigars is a problem too.
SPEAKER_01So so then how does an entity like that remain prosperous? You have to raise prices, and that's exactly what they did. However, I will say the that that monumental price hike that happened in 2022, that was actually before Hurricane Ian. I mean, I think some people say, well, the hurricane they had to raise prices. Um, that came beforehand anyway.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Cuban cigars are extremely expensive, and we're we're smoking a couple of expensive ones right now.
SPEAKER_01We're smoking the two brands that got the that got um hiked up the most. So everything got more expensive, but Cohiba and Trinidad went double and triple overnight in May. And I think double and triple.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that that changes your buying, that could change your buying habits.
SPEAKER_01So that Ciglo 6 that you're smoking right now, when I saw it in Havana, it was $100 and something dollars, and it's that was a couple years ago. It's more than that. This is the Trinidad Cabildo de Disney Limitada for 2024, uh, well over $100, $130, $140. So part of that price hike was everything was tied to the Hong Kong dollar. Those shopping trips that we spoke about before, what was also so attractive about them is it was so much cheaper to buy cigars in Havana. So um you had the traditionally expensive markets like Canada, Hong Kong, the UK. You had more reasonably priced markets like Spain, Switzerland, and Germany. And then you had really the least expensive market of all was in Havana. So you could buy cohibas at uh a really reasonable price. And that is not anymore. Now the other cigars, yes, the other brands, the smaller brands, but not cohiba. Cohiba is supposed to cost the same in Havana as it does in Hong Kong, as it does in UK, as it does in Canada, as it does in uh as it does in Switzerland. You have local taxes um and and different regulations in different countries that will maybe raise the price a little bit more, but we're talking about base MSRP.
SPEAKER_00I mean, $100 is what some people would pay for a box of cigars. And uh, you know, I've been smoking cigars for a long time. So it in my mind, $100 is a is a pretty good price for cigars. There are still some bargains in the world of Cuban cigars, not the ones that we're smoking now.
SPEAKER_01No, no, no, name some of them. No, no, not at all. And I and I just want to be clear. Prices went up for for all the brands, but not as precipitously as they did with with Cohiba and Trinidad. So some of the smaller brands are still um, I wouldn't call them cheap, but they're cheap by comparison. So if you get a Bolivar, uh Boulevard Bellicoso or a Partiga Serie D number four. Yeah, the most popular cigar made in Cuba. Yeah, they're gonna cost you around 35 pounds or something like that. Still not cheap, but but um cheap when you consider the alternative, uh, Juan Lopez, St. Louis Rey, these smaller brands that can deliver a really nice smoking experience.
SPEAKER_00Raphael Gonzalez.
SPEAKER_01If you could find them. If you could find a Raph Gonzalez, sure.
SPEAKER_00Um La Gloria Cubana. The hard to find, too. Yeah. Speaking of hard to find, it's not just Cuba where these cigars, where all Cuban cigars are hard to find. Uh it's a worldwide problem. Okay, I I went to Paris not too long ago.
SPEAKER_01It was uh last year, and when I went, I went to one of the premier tobacconists there, uh Alessavet. When I went and walked into that humidor, I would say it was about 85% non-Cuban.
SPEAKER_00And the 15 years ago.
SPEAKER_01The Cubans were in a small section as soon as you walked into the left, uh, maybe two small cohiba sizes, uh, the new Romeos, um, some Hoyota Monterey, but the rest of that humidor was Dominican, Honduran, some Nicaraguan. And so I would say is about 15, 85, 15, whereas uh five, six years prior, it would have been the opposite.
SPEAKER_00Lots of problems, lots of issues, rapidly changing issues facing Cuba. Obviously, cigars are a small part of that when you think about what the Cuban people are going through, but of course, all those issues have a direct effect on the Cuban cigar production and what's going on. We don't know how it's gonna be resolved, but and it's changing considerably and quite often.
SPEAKER_01Well, do you think it speaks to quality at all? I mean, how's that cigar?
SPEAKER_00This cigar is great. We rated it at 94 points. It's smoking beautifully. Some people think that uh just because a cigar is Cuban, it's gonna be a great cigar. Our ratings prove that's not the case. But I always say that when Cuba gets it right, they do it an incredible job. How's that Trinidad could build us?
SPEAKER_01What we rated this uh right around the time it came out, I think at 91 points. It it it has almost two years of age on it, as I mentioned before, and that that age has has certainly done it well. I would I I'd probably rate it a little higher than that, a little stronger than typical Trinidad. ads and and that is usually the case with the Edicion Limitadas. You have an unusual size. This is a 46 ring gauge, which kind of concentrates it a bit. And then you have a darker wrapper, which uh in the case of the Cuban Edicion Limitadas means uh it makes it a little stronger, a little bolder. So this is like uh Trinidad Plus and I love the size, especially when Trinidad has so many of those super fat sizes. I uh I love this 46 ring gauge.
SPEAKER_00Well it's a pleasure to be smoking these cigars. Uh we'll be following this Cuba situation very closely on cigarvisionado.com and uh we'll probably revisit the the subject of Cuba on a future podcast.
SPEAKER_01And who knows, maybe at the end of the year they'll rally and and have a smaller festival like they did a couple years ago for Cohiba but uh we'll just have to wait and see.
SPEAKER_00Follow along on cigarvisionado.com for news updates and be sure to join us again for the next Cigar Vicionado podcast. Subscribe see us on YouTube, Apple Spotify and of course on CigarVicionado.com I'm David Savona. I'm Greg Matola. Thanks for joining us in the Cigar Vicionado Lounge