It’s Party Time For Old Stogie Cuba To Celebrate Communist Cigar

The Cohiba was conceived, nurtured and smoked by Fidel Castro to prove communist Cuba could still make a great cigar, and when the famed stogie turns 30 Friday it will be feted with a decidedly un-proletarian bash.

A $500-a-ticket party at Havana’s Tropicana nightclub is planned for about 800 invitees on a super-secret guest list rumored to include 100 Americans.

The soiree, a fund raiser for the nation’s cash-strapped health care system, will include the sale of commemorative boxes of Cohibas for $2,500 each and humidors autographed by the Cuban leader himself.

“Cohiba is considered the best cigar in the world,” said Dan Hoteman, manager of La Casa Del Habano cigar shop in Windsor, Ontario, just across the border from Detroit. “It’s the blend, the sizes, the quality of the roll.”

The Cohiba’s mystique began in the early 60’s as the brainchild of Castro. After the revolution, most wealthy tobacco barons fled Cuba and took much of the know-how and history of the trade with them.

“Castro wanted to prove to the world that Cuba under his leadership not only could keep making premium cigars, but also create them from scratch,” said Richard Carleton Hacker, author of “The Ultimate Cigar Book.”

So the Cohiba, named for the Tino Indian tribe’s word for tobacco, became the first cigar produced under a communist Cuba. It is rolled using only the best Cuban stock of what many consider to be the world’s finest tobacco.

Until Castro kicked the habit in 1985, he and his top lieutenants smoked Cohibas, as did their friends and visiting dignitaries.

Castro so loved them that U.S. covert operatives in the ‘60s considered using an exploding cigar to kill the bearded Marxist.

In 1982, when it was made available to the public, the Cohiba became one of the most popular cigars on the market, and remains the top pick of many cigar aficionados.

Only about three million are made a year and fetch about $50 apiece on the black market in the United States, which bans their sale because of the trade embargo against Cuba.

A box of 25 Cohiba Esplendidos, the 7-inch size, fetches about $1,200 in Hoteman’s shop - if you can get a whole box.

Not everyone is ready to celebrate the Cohiba. Cuban-Americans in Miami are critical of the communist cigar, and some cigar lovers grumble that the world’s most sought-after smoke is not what it used to be.

Hacker said the Cuban government’s hunger for hard currency has led it to cut corners to get Cohibas to the market faster.

“I’ve sampled Cohiba cigars from time to time, and I find no cause for celebration,” said Norman Sharp, president of the Washington-based Cigar Association. “They are very inconsistent.”