H. UPMANN

German roots, Havana ambition

Some luxury brands begin with a designer’s sketch. H. Upmann began with two German brothers looking toward Cuba. Hermann Dietrich Upmann and his younger brother, August, established the cigar brand in Havana in 1844. Their family name would eventually travel much farther than either man could have imagined.

Hermann came from Bielefeld, in what is now Germany, and belonged to a generation of merchants willing to cross the Atlantic to build a business. Tobacco became the foundation of a family enterprise that later extended into banking and international trade. That connection between cigars and finance still gives the name its distinctive character: part tobacco house, part reminder of Havana’s commercial past.

The cedar box belongs to that identity, too. Altadis, which markets the non-Cuban H. Upmann portfolio, credits the brothers with pioneering its use for storing cigars. The presentation mattered. A carefully packed box could carry a maker’s name into a drawing room or across an ocean, turning a consumable pleasure into something recognizable before the lid was even lifted.

By the nineteenth century’s great international exhibitions, the brand was collecting distinctions that would become part of its visual language. The medals on its boxes refer to awards earned at international fairs. For a cigar maker selling far from home, those little gold emblems served a serious purpose: they offered reassurance that the name meant something.

When the bank went under

The family’s next chapters were considerably less comfortable. During the First World War, its German connections became a liability. Wartime restrictions, blacklisting and pressure on the later generation of Upmanns disrupted the business. Then Cuba’s postwar sugar boom collapsed, shaking the island’s financial system. The Upmann bank suspended payments in May 1922, as documented in archival research by historians Margrit Schulte Beerbühl and Barbara Frey.

The cigar business might have disappeared with it. Instead, British importer J. Frankau & Co. sent Otto Braden to Havana to help preserve the factory and its supply. Historian Simon Chase, working from the company’s board minutes, found that Braden was authorized to commit up to £10,000. Further visits followed before the purchase was completed in May 1925. The bank was finished; the name on the cigar still had a future.

A small tube. A big argument.

Otto’s son, Waldo Braden, supplied another memorable chapter. He wanted to protect individual cigars in sealed aluminum tubes, making them easier to distribute without damage. His colleagues doubted that traditional Havana smokers would accept the idea.

Waldo paid for development himself and won permission for a trial. The first tubed H. Upmann cigars launched in December 1933. It worked. As Chase recounts, the once-skeptical company subsequently secured exclusive rights to use his tubes for the brand for five years. One of cigar culture’s familiar accessories had survived its own boardroom battle.

Revolution, and two futures

In 1937, Menéndez y García acquired H. Upmann, and Montecristo production moved into its factory. The arrangement brought two names now deeply associated with Havana cigars under the same roof.

The next upheaval was political. Following the Cuban Revolution, the government took over the Menéndez business in 1960. Cuban H. Upmann production continued, while the name also developed a separate life outside the island. That history explains a distinction that still matters: Cuban and non-Cuban H. Upmann cigars are separate expressions, with different production and tobacco blends.

The president’s overnight order

No H. Upmann story has traveled quite as far as the one involving John F. Kennedy. In his own account for Cigar Aficionado, former White House press secretary Pierre Salinger recalled being asked to find roughly 1,000 Petit Upmanns. Kennedy wanted them by the following morning.

Salinger knew the shops and spent the evening working on the request. He returned with 1,200 cigars. According to his recollection, Kennedy smiled, took a document from his desk and signed the Cuban embargo measure. It is a remarkable scene: an enormous geopolitical decision sharing desk space with a very personal shopping list.

The proclamation was signed on February 3, 1962, with its import prohibition taking effect on February 7. The cigar-room drama comes from Salinger’s later telling; the dates come from the document itself.

From Uncle Miltie to the music business

Milton Berle was another outspoken admirer. In a 1995 interview with Arthur Marx, the television pioneer recalled searching New York’s tobacco counters for Upmanns as the embargo approached. His shopping expedition took in Dunhill and department stores including Saks and Bloomingdale’s. At Saks, he remembered arguing over whether a cigar tasted like a proper Upmann. For Berle, the name came with a very particular expectation.

The enthusiasm continued into other corners of entertainment. Music executive Kevin Liles singled out the H. Upmann Magnum 56 Edición Limitada 2015 in a 2021 profile. Actor Nick E. Tarabay, known for Spartacus, named the Magnum 50 as a favorite in a 2026 interview, describing an appreciation for a cigar at sunset with coffee or bourbon.

These are different personalities, different eras and different sizes of cigar. Together, they show how a nineteenth-century name has remained part of the conversation without belonging to just one generation.

Where the real story grows

For all the famous names, the Cuban cigar’s agricultural story leads west of Havana to Vuelta Abajo, in Pinar del Río. Habanos identifies this as the source of H. Upmann’s tobacco and describes its Cuban cigars as entirely handmade with long filler. Its general description of the house style is light to medium in strength.

Within that region, San Luis is particularly associated with wrapper leaf, while San Juan y Martínez has a reputation for binder and filler. Those are regional distinctions, rather than a list of individual farms contracted to the brand. Soil, local conditions and the skill of the growers all belong in the story before a roller ever picks up a leaf.

The layers have different jobs. The wrapper forms the visible exterior; the binder holds the bunch together; the filler makes up its interior. Their selection and combination matter more than the color of a band. Understanding the leaf is what turns a famous label into something more interesting than a famous label.

An old name with new accents

Outside Cuba, H. Upmann follows a broader tobacco map. The 1844 Reserve is made in the Dominican Republic, bringing together an Ecuadorian wrapper, a Nicaraguan binder and Dominican filler. The word “Cubano” in its wrapper description should not be mistaken for its growing origin: that wrapper comes from Ecuador.

The original H. Upmann by AJ Fernandez takes the story to Estelí, Nicaragua. Its blend combines an Ecuadorian Sumatra wrapper with Corojo ’99 binder and Dominican and Nicaraguan fillers. Altadis describes it as medium to full-bodied, illustrating how far the non-Cuban portfolio can range beyond one expected house style.

The brand’s 180th anniversary in 2024 brought another collaboration between Rafael Nodal and AJ Fernandez, this time built around Nicaraguan tobaccos. A name established in 1844 was still giving contemporary cigar makers room to experiment.