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This year, General Cigar celebrates its fifty-first anniversary. That remarkable milestone comes fast on the heels of the forty-first birthday of General Cigar's most iconic brand, Macanudo. It's an exciting time for everyone involved in building this legendary organization from the artisans who craft its portfolio of cigars to the agronomists who care for the fields and plants to company's sales and marketing executives and an opportunity to reflect on General Cigar's remarkable history.
That history is rich and colorful, filled with people passionate about cigars. It begins with the Cullman family specifically, Ferdinand Kullman, a wine merchant who immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1848. After Anglicizing his last name to Cullman, Ferdinand not only continued his wine business but also expanded into making and selling cigars.
His son Joseph Cullman went to work as a tobacco merchant. In 1904, Joseph's son Joseph Jr. followed suit by joining the family's tobacco business. In fact, he's the one credited with developing Connecticut Shade tobacco from Cuban seed, a leaf that wraps much of General Cigar's portfolio to this day.
It was soon time for another generation of Cullmans to follow the family tradition. In 1944, returning from Washington after a stint with the U.S. Treasury, Edgar Cullman Sr. decided he wanted to work at Cullman Brothers, his father's tobacco business. His father insisted that he learn how to roll cigars and cultivate tobacco.
Meanwhile, the company grew and prospered, selling sought-after tobacco to cigar makers. Yet Edgar Cullman also wanted to use the fine tobacco he grew. So he looked around for a cigar company to buy.
In 1960, he was presented with the opportunity to buy General Cigar Company, at the time the producer of White Owl, William Penn,Van Dyck and Robert Burns cigars. Cullman seized the opportunity and made the purchase.
In 1968, General Cigar purchased Temple Hall, a production facility in Jamaica, and its brand Macanudo. Although it's now the top-selling premium brand in the United States, at that time only small quantities of Macanudos had been produced for the British market. Penetrating the U.S. required much greater numbers of cigars, all made with meticulous attention to quality and consistency. The blend would have to be different, too.
To meet that goal, General Cigar began development of Macanudo under the careful eye of cigar master Ramón Cifuentes, an expert whose love of tobacco was unmatched. Finally introduced to the U.S. in 1971, the cigar featured a new and unique blend of tobacco grown by the company. It also set General Cigar's trajectory toward industry success in motion.
Cifuentes, a Cuban who hailed from a respected tobacco family, remains to this day credited with instilling his exacting standards for tobacco processing and cigar-making techniques in General Cigar's generations of skilled artisans.
As popular as the Macanudo brand is, its cigars are still hand-rolled one by one. The brand's signature rounded crown is a hallmark of every cigar crafted in General Cigar's facilities in Santiago, the Dominican Republic.
Another event in the mid-1970s propelled General Cigar to the pinnacle of the premium-cigar business: the purchase of the U.S. rights to Partagas cigars from Ramón Cifuentes's family, who had made the legendary brand in Cuba until Fidel Castro took over. Cifuentes was elated at the chance to reestablish the Partagas brand in the U.S., and his efforts helped secure a place for Partagas in American premium-cigar history.
In 1974, General Cigar began cultivating another cigar master in Daniel Núñez, who became Cifuentes's protégé. With his extraordinary mastery of tobacco, Núñez went on to become president and chief operating officer of General Cigar in 2005. Since his retirement in 2009, Núñez has served as Executive Advisor to the company.
With Macanudo and Partagas secured, General Cigar continued to strategically add to its portfolio. In 1981, the company received its first registration of the Cohiba trademark in the United States.
Since 1992, General Cigar has been actively assisting more than 6,000 employees in the Dominican Republic and Honduras. The company underwrites a number of corporate-citizenship endeavors in these countries: not only continuing-education and literacy programs, but also the cultivation of fruit, vegetables, dairy and meat that is then sold at cost to company employees. In addition, General Cigar aids local schools by providing electricity and computers, and promotes environmental stewardship with a dedicated reforestation program that cultivates mahogany and cedar trees to replenish the wood used in making the company's cigar boxes.
In 1996, General Cigar opened America's premier bar, restaurant and cigar lounge: Club Macanudo in New York City. The Club continues to welcome A-list celebrities, athletes and cigar lovers alike, and remains a mainstay of New York's nightlife.
With the company already boasting significant imported brands such as Macanudo, Partagas and Cohiba in its portfolio, it was a logical progression for General Cigar to acquire the leading Honduran cigar maker, Villazon & Company. The deal went through in 1997, and with it, the renowned brands Punch, Hoyo de Monterrey and Hoyo de Monterrey Excalibur joined the portfolio.
In 1999, General Cigar sold its mass-market cigar business to Swedish Match AB. At that time, Dan Carr — then General Cigar's vice president of sales — joined Swedish Match to continue building the brands he had been cultivating since 1996. In 1999, Swedish Match AB also purchased both the La Gloria Cubana brand and the El Credito factory in Miami, bringing both under the aegis of General Cigar.
In 2005, Swedish Match acquired General Cigar as a wholly owned subsidiary. In October 2007, Dan Carr returned to his roots as General Cigar's senior vice president of sales and marketing. Shortly thereafter, in April 2009, his passion and commitment to driving the business led to his appointment as chief operating officer of General Cigar.
In March of 2010, General Cigar's then-parent company Swedish Match signed an agreement with the Plasencia Group to form a new tobacco growing and procurement operation. This joint venture provides General Cigar with access to the Plasencia's highly regarded leaf growing, processing and cigar making operations in both Nicaragua and Honduras, while increasing General Cigar's tobacco expertise and manufacturing flexibility.
Most recently, in October 2010, General Cigar commemorated another milestone, for the company merged with Scandinavian Tobacco Group (STG) to form a worldwide company focused on cigars. Now the second largest cigar company in the world, General Cigar is poised to use its expanded resources to bring even more excitement and innovation to the premium cigar category.
Today, with Carr as president of an expansive empire and in concert with a team of professionals and artisans in the United States, Dominican Republic, Honduras and Nicaragua, the future of General Cigar burns bright. Never resting on its laurels, the company remains focused on its commitment to bringing innovation to a timeless art and introducing acclaimed cigars crafted from exceptional, and often proprietary, tobacco.
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