Quintero (cigar)

Quintero is a cigar brand owned by British conglomerate Imperial Brands. The cigars are produced in Cuba by Habanos S.A., a state-owned tobacco company.

History
The Quintero cigar brand was created as Quintero y Hermanos or Quintero and Brothers, when Agustín Quintero and his four brothers opened a small cigar factory in the town of Cienfuegos, Cuba in 1924 and began producing a handmade cigar.

Quintero popular in Cuba and in Spain. By the 1940s, Quintero y Hermanos had opened a larger rolling factory in Havana, and had begun using prime tobaccos from the Vuelta Abajo region.

It the early 1960s, after Fidel Castro nationalized the Cuban cigar industry, Quintero became a primarily machine-made cigar, and most of the handmade sizes were dropped in favor of machine-made or hand-finished cigars using short filler tobaccos. For many years, Quintero was the only Cuban machine-made brand to be globally marketed by Habanos SA.

In 2002, as part of a marketing strategy to promote Cuban cigars, the Cuban government marketing organization, Habanos S.A. chose to discontinue machine-made cigars in favor of handmade versions.