Por Larrañaga is the name of two cigar brands: one produced in Cuba for Habanos SA, the Cuban state-owned tobacco company, and the other produced in the Dominican Republic and Honduras for Altadis, a division of Imperial Tobacco.
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Por Larrañaga was registered in 1834 by Ignacio Larrañaga. By the end of the 19th century, Por Larrañaga had become a well-known premium cigar brand producing both expensive and inexpensive cigars. In 1925, Por Larrañaga became the first factory to make machine-made cigars which soon resulted in a boycott by factory workers. At the time of the revolution, Por Larrañaga was the sixth largest producing Cuban brand.
Up until the 1970s, Por Larrañaga remained a respectable and popular premium cigar brand. In the 1980s production fell dramatically and due to trademark litigation in the 1990s, export of the brand was reduced to only a few countries. For some time the brand was reduced to almost entirely machine-made or hand-finished and was mainly sold in Canada and the Middle East. Now the brand has made a bit of a comeback, with two of its four vitolas being totally hand-made.
In 2006, Habanos produced a few thousand boxes of Por Larrañaga Lonsdales (a discontinued vitola much mourned by aficionados of the brand) for release in Germany. The cigars were packaged in 25-count dress boxes and marked with a special second band that read "Exclusivo Alemania" (Germany Exclusive).
Cigar Aficionado's December 2006 issue reviewed its first Por Larrañaga outside of its "Connoisseur's Corner". The petit corona selected scored an impressive 91.
The brand was resurrected in the United States in early 2007 as Por Larrañaga Cuban Grade, by Florida-based importer Cuban Imports. No Cuban tobacco is used in these cigars; they use Dominican and Honduran filler, a Mexican binder, and either an Ecuadoran-grown Connecticut-seed wrapper or a Mexican maduro wrapper. It is also worth noting that Altadis USA has had some variations of the brand, none containing Cuban Tobacco, of course.
The following list of vitolas de salida (commercial vitolas) within the Por Larrañaga marque lists their size and ring gauge in Imperial (and Metric), their vitolas de galera (factory vitolas), and their common name in American cigar slang.
Hand-Made Vitolas
Edición Regional Releases
Launched by Hunters & Frankau on the 1st November the Por Larranaga Magnificos is a Habanos Regional Speciality exclusively for sale in the UK (English Market Selection). Coming in at 63⁄4" by 50 ring gauge it was rolled to reproduce the size and flavour of the 1970s Por Larranaga Magnum.
Only 1400 limited edition numbered boxes were made with 1000 tens and 400 boxes of twenty-five.
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