For this year’s installment in the Macanudo Estate Reserve series, General Cigar Co. went back to the brand’s roots and the country that produced the tobacco that helped this cigar become a staple in so many humidors: Jamaica. The Macanudo brand was launched in 1968 and traces its history to the Fernando Palicio family, known for making Punch cigars in Cuba. When they went to Jamaica, they created the first Macanudo brand. The General Cigar of the early 1970s, then the company owned by the Cullman family, picked up the brand and made it the company’s main focus, bringing in the legendary Cuban cigar maker Ramón Cifuentes to oversee the company’s Jamaican factory and train the workers on the art of making cigars. It’s been over 15 years since the Macanudo line featured Jamaican tobacco and nearly as long since they were made in the country. In 2000, General Cigar closed the Temple Hall cigar factory where the Macanudo line had been made and moved production to the Dominican Republic, with the use of Jamaican tobacco slowly phased out of the blend, with the process said to have begun as early as the mid-1990s as there was simply not enough quality tobacco being grown ...
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