Partagas Cigars: 1845 Havana, Santiago Since 1979, and the Black Label

1845, Calle Industria, and the man who read aloud

Don Jaime Partagás was a Catalan who came to Cuba and built a factory that outlasted him by nearly two centuries. Its significance is not only that it made good cigars. It was the first factory to employ a lector, a reader who sat on a raised platform and read newspapers and novels to the rollers through the working day, paid out of the workers' own pockets.

The practice spread across the industry and eventually to Tampa. It is also the reason several cigar brands carry literary names: Montecristo comes from The Count of Monte Cristo, a favourite of the torcedores who heard it read.

The Cifuentes family bought the business in the twentieth century and ran it until the Cuban industry was nationalised. The factory on Calle Industria continued under Habanos S.A. and still produces Cuban Partagás today.

The American Partagas

General Cigar Company secured the Partagás trademark for the American market in the late 1970s, working with Ramón Cifuentes. Production began in Jamaica and moved in 1979 to Santiago in the Dominican Republic, where by the mid-1990s several hundred workers were producing millions of Partagás a year. The brand's own materials describe more than 180 years of heritage, counting from 1845.

The Dominican Partagás is a genuinely different cigar from the Cuban one, and it does not pretend otherwise. Where the Cuban brand is built on Vuelta Abajo tobacco, the American one runs on Dominican piloto cubano, Nicaraguan leaf and Cameroon wrapper, with the Black Label using a proprietary Connecticut Havana seed.

Who owns Partagas now

General Cigar Company, part of Scandinavian Tobacco Group. Partagas moved into General Cigar on 2 February 2026, having spent the previous five years at Forged Cigar Company, where it had been one of the five founding brands in February 2021.

In the same reshuffle Room101 and Don Tomas also moved to General Cigar, while Cohiba, Punch and Havana Honeys went the other way to Forged. Partagas now sits alongside Macanudo, CAO, Hoyo de Monterrey and Excalibur.

Partagas Black Label

Black Label is the flagship of the American brand and the reason most people who buy Partagas buy it.

The wrapper is the unusual part. Connecticut Havana seed means Cuban-descended seed grown in the Connecticut River Valley, and grown sun-exposed rather than under shade, which is why it comes out dark and oily rather than pale and thin like Connecticut shade. It is not broadleaf and it is not the shade leaf you find on a Macanudo. It is its own thing, and General Cigar treats it as proprietary.

We carry the Black Label Maximo in the tube, 6 x 50 and the Black Label Magnifico, 6 x 54.

Why a double-ligero filler matters

Most cigars build their filler from a mix of primings: ligero from the top of the plant for strength, seco from the middle for aroma, volado from the bottom for burn. A blender balances the three.

Black Label's published filler is ligero only, from two origins: Dominican piloto cubano and Nicaraguan. That is an aggressive choice and it explains everything about how the cigar behaves.

The binder is doing quiet work here too. La Vega Especial is a Dominican varietal used specifically for its burn and structure, which is exactly what a filler with no volado in it needs.

The wider Partagas range

The Classic deserves a note. Cameroon wrapper is grown in West Africa, thin and toothy, with a sweet-and-savoury character no other leaf reproduces. It is scarce, fragile, and used by only a handful of brands. If you have smoked a Cohiba Red Dot you have met it.

Wrapper, binder, filler

The wrappers in this range

Connecticut Havana seed: Cuban-descended seed grown in the Connecticut River Valley, sun-exposed rather than shade-grown, which produces a dark, oily leaf. Proprietary to General Cigar. The Black Label wrapper.
Cameroon: grown in Cameroon and the Central African Republic. Thin, toothy, distinctly sweet and savoury at once. The Classic wrapper.

Wrapper shades, palest to darkest: Double Claro / Candela Claro Colorado Claro Colorado Colorado Maduro Maduro Oscuro

Primings: the whole point of this cigar

Written phonetically the top leaf comes out "lahero" or "lejero"; the word is ligero, lee-HEH-roh. The rest of the vocabulary: capa wrapper, capote binder, tripa filler, torcedor roller, lector the factory reader Partagás invented, vitola size, galera the rolling gallery, pilón the fermentation stack.

Varietals across the brand

Piloto Cubano La Vega Especial Olor Havana seed Cameroon San Andrés Corojo Criollo Habano

Sizes and vitolas

Length in inches by ring gauge, ring gauge being diameter in 64ths of an inch. A 6 x 54 is six inches long and 54/64 of an inch across.

Other vitola names across our catalog: Petit Corona, Corona, Corona Gorda, Lonsdale, Lancero, Panetela, Belicoso, Torpedo, Perfecto, Rothschild, Churchill, Double Corona, Presidente, Salomon, Culebra, Super Gordo and Diadema. Browse the full range.

What we taste, from our own humidor

Black Label Magnifico, 6 x 54

The wrapper is genuinely dark and genuinely oily, with a visible sheen that most Connecticut-grown leaf does not have. Cold draw is earth and walnut. It lights heavy: dark earth, roasted nut, a black-pepper edge that sits at the back rather than the tip of the tongue. There is no sweetness anywhere and it does not want any.

The all-ligero filler shows in two ways. First, it burns slowly, so the 6 x 54 runs closer to an hour and forty minutes than the eighty you would expect. Second, it punishes fast smoking. Draw hard and it goes bitter and hot. Take your time and it stays remarkably even. The ash is dark grey and dense.

This is an after-dinner cigar with something substantial in the glass. Cabernet works, bourbon works better.

Black Label Maximo, 6 x 50 tubed

Four ring gauges narrower and it reads noticeably tighter and more concentrated, because a smaller ring means proportionally more wrapper influence per draw. The nuttiness comes forward and the pepper is sharper. The tube keeps them in good order, which matters for a cigar with this much oil in the leaf. Around ninety minutes.

Pairing, cutting, storage

Cabernet Sauvignon is the pairing the brand names, and it is right: the tannin and the ligero meet each other properly. Bourbon, aged rum and a heavy porter all work. Coffee is too light for this one unless it is a very dark espresso.

Cut cleanly with a sharp guillotine. The oily wrapper is more robust than a thin shade leaf but a dull blade will still crush the head. See our cutters and lighters. Store at 65 to 70 percent relative humidity, 68 to 70 degrees, in a humidor with reliable humidification. Ligero-heavy cigars reward long-term aging more than mild blends do, because there is more in them to soften.

The bottom line

The American Partagas carries the oldest and most consequential name in Cuban cigar history without leaning on it, which is more than most brands in that position manage. The Black Label is a serious, uncompromising cigar: an all-ligero filler under a proprietary oily wrapper, with no sweetness and no apology. It is not for everyone and it is not trying to be. If you want something to smoke slowly after a heavy meal with a real drink beside it, this is one of the better answers on our shelf.

Keep exploring

Same house, General Cigar: Macanudo · CAO · Hoyo de Monterrey
Sister company, Forged: Cohiba · Punch · Bolivar · Diesel · La Gloria Cubana
Other full-bodied Dominicans: E.P. Carrillo · La Aurora · Arturo Fuente

For adults 21+. Please enjoy responsibly.

Cigar Inc. · 21900 Burbank Blvd UNIT 265, Woodland Hills, CA 91367 · 1 818-719-9885 · Info@Cigarinc.com