The Truth About Cuban Cigar Reserva and Gran Reserva: A Marketing Scheme?

The marketing department of Habanos has created this idea that 3 year old tobacco is worthy of a reserva label, and five year old tobacco can be a gran reserva, while that would all be considered young tobacco in the production of new world cigars. And somehow, fans of Cuban cigars fall for this marketing scheme and pay two to three times the value of the annual Cuban reserva or gran reserva even though it’s just a regular production vitola made with tobacco that has little age on it compared to no age at all.

With a predicted production of only 35 to 40 percent to the recent pre-covid years, Habanos needs all the tricks they can pull to keep the turnover at a high level. They did that last year with their new global price system and they can’t hike the price that much again this year. So they take their other big cash cow, the Cohiba brand, and use that for a probably outrageously prices gran reserva, the Cohiba Espléndidos Gran Reserva Cosecha 2017. This is the same as the regular 7×47 Esplendidos, the classic Julieta No.2 aka Churchill.