Romeo y Julieta

Romeo y Julieta is probably the most famous – and certainly the most romantic – brand of Cuban cigars. The unusual name comes from the age-old Cuban tradition of providing entertainment for the cigar rollers in the form of reading books to them while they worked. And Shakespeare's passionate and touching tragedy met with a particularly powerful reaction in the hearts of the hot-blooded Cubans.

The Secret of Success

The Romeo y Julieta brand was created in 1873 (or 1875, according to some sources) by two immigrants from the Spanish province of Asturia — Don Inocencio Alvarez Rodriguez and Don Jose Manin Garcia. The small factory where they began producing their cigars was located in the business quarter of Havana, at 87, San Rafael Street. Although this factory was very small indeed, the owners worked so hard that their business gathered pace and was soon able to compete with the city's major cigar producers.

Starting a new business is never easy, and it was particularly difficult in the fiercely competitive conditions that existed in the cigar trade in the latter part of the 19th century. It could take decades for a new brand to become sufficiently well known. But the first owners of Romeo y Julieta managed to do that much more quickly. The high quality of the tobacco harvested in the famous Vuelta Abajo district, the magnificent hand-rolled cigars (right from the beginning Alvarez insisted on hiring the best torcedores in Havana), and the sophisticated packaging of the product ensured that Romeo y Julieta won the hearts of the most demanding smokers.

But the man with the ideas who really made the Romeo y Julieta brand take off was Don Manin Garcia. It was he who thought up the big secret that was to make it possible for Romeo y Julieta to become one of the major competitors on the Cuban cigar market within the first ten years of production. The company achieved its success due to an apparently simple, but extremely effective decision. What, he asked himself, is needed to ensure a good cigar. The answer was obvious: good tobacco. But since the owners of Romeo y Julieta did not have their own plantation, they were forced to buy tobacco at auctions. Knowing in advance whose tobacco was the best was an extremely complicated business. In 1875, buyers had none of the technical innovations for assessing tobacco quality that exist today, so they only had their own experience and intuition to rely on. But Don Garcia thought of a way round this. He sent a number of experienced observers to the finest plantations in Cuba with instructions to watch carefully all stages through which the maturing plants pass and then decide which supplier the company should have dealings with.

Every season, Don Garcia's 'spies' would go out to the plantations as hired workers, where they made a note of all the problems affecting the crop, like droughts, pest infestations and technology infringements. In this way, they were able to make informed decisions at the factory as to which tobacco to buy to ensure the quality of their future product. And it wasn't long before smokers began to notice the difference between 'ordinary' cigars and Romeo y Julieta cigars, the taste of which had been the concern of their producers from the moment that the first seeds of the crop fell on the ground.

Eloquent testimony to the popularity and commercial success of Messrs Alvarez and Garcia's products comes from the fact that during the first years of their factory's existence, the owners of Romeo y Julieta could issue more than a dozen new brands: La Mar (in June 1876), Los Amantes de Verona and Monteschi у Capuletti —in continuation of the Shakespeare theme (in June 1879), La Superfina, La Flor de Lozano Pendas y Cia., Daniel Webster and La Cubana (all in 1882), La Salamith, Entre las Rosas, La Mia, La Sonambula, Maria Stuart (in 1883). Although none of these was able to upstage the Romeo y Julieta brand, they were all fairly long-lasting and brought the factory considerable profit.

Trading Policy

In 1886 Jose Manin Garcia left Romeo y Julieta. After a brief period working with Montero, another entrepreneur, Inocencio Alvarez took control of the factory himself. This lasted until 1902, when he sold the business to Rabell, Acosta & Co. But this company did not own Romeo y Julieta for very long, and in the following year it was bought by Jose Rodriguez Fernandez or, as he was better known to his friends, Don Pepin. Many scholars of cigar history consider that Don Pepin was the last patriarch of the 'golden age' of Cuba's cigar industry.

The name of this man, whose ideas were often far in advance of their time, is connected with the second upswing of the Romeo y Julieta brand. An immigrant from the same Asturia, Don Pepin was sent to Cuba as a nine-year-old boy to learn the tobacco business. By the age of 37, he knew the profession inside out and had made an enormous number of contacts. He had worked on a plantation, had been a roller's help, had become director of a small tobacco factory, and had finally come to represent the interests of Cabanas y Carvajal abroad. But after American interests came to dominate the company, Don Pepin left and decided to start up his own business. Together with two other Spanish immigrants, he founded Rodriguez, Arguelles & Co Inc., and bought the Romeo y Julieta factory.

Whereas Don Garcia had done everything to ensure the quality of Romeo y Julieta cigars and create the brand's fine reputation, Don Pepin, who essentially took over from him, made an invaluable contribution to the product's promotion. At a time when the owners of other tobacco factories not only gave no thought to advertising, but didn't even bother to register their brands, Don Pepin brought about a real revolution in cigar marketing.

By the beginning of the 20th century, Cuban cigars were known throughout the world — and for that reason they were frequently faked. These cheap fakes caused enormous material and moral damage to the producers of Havana cigars, since they undermined consumer confidence in the genuine products. Furthermore, combating the 'pirates' was not easy — the concept of trade-mark rights in the cigar industry was, to put it mildly, not a particularly common one. But Don Pepin quickly realized what he had to do to cope with this problem. In 1909, he officially registered the brand at the International Union in Berne, Switzerland under № 7792, and thus Romeo y Julieta became the first officially registered brand of Cuban cigars.

In a bid to move beyond the markets that were traditional for Cuban cigar manufacturers, like the United States and Great Britain, Jose Pepin Rodriguez used his experience at Cabanas y Carvajal to create a network of sales managers who would increase efforts to promote Romeo y Julieta abroad. And although the United States and Great Britain remained the company's number one and number two consumers respectively, the brand began to make headway in Canada, Australia, some South American countries, and in continental Europe — Spain, France, Portugal, Italy and Switzerland.

'Little Shakespeare'

Don Pepin was a naturally gifted man who possessed not only commercial instinct, but outstanding creative abilities. All the many different advertising campaigns that were used to promote Romeo y Julieta were thought up by him. And the majority of these were not only innovative, but also highly eccentric.

Thus he spent a long time virtually laying siege to the authorities in Verona in a bid to get permission to purchase the famous Palazzo di Capuletto, in which the events of Shakespeare's tragedy unfolded. In Julieta's house, he had plans to organize a permanent cigar fair and a smokers' salon for admirers of Romeo y Julieta, but the project was opposed by the intelligentsia of Verona. The only thing that the city authorities would permit him to do was to open a small cigar kiosk in the palace. This kiosk, incidentally, was in itself a work of art. It was made especially for Don Pepin by Cuban craftsmen from rare sorts of hard woods, and here visitors could always buy the finest hand-rolled Romeo y Julieta cigars.

But failure to obtain the Palazzo di Capuletto did not depress Don Pepin. Back at his factory in Cuba, he made an exact copy of the famous Julieta balcony where the two lovers declared their affections, and a picture of this balcony can still be seen on Romeo y Julieta cigar boxes. When the factory was moved to a new location, the balcony was moved with it.

Incidentally, there is an interesting story connected with the factory. By the beginning of the 20th century, the old building was clearly too small for Romeo y Julieta's rapidly developing production. The number of workers had risen to 1200 (750 of whom were firstclass cigar rollers), and the annual number of cigars produced had increased to twenty million. So Don Pepin moved the enterprise to another location on Father Varelan Street, where during Spanish rule there had been a bullfight arena. Cuban cigar factories were traditionally known for the magnificence of their appearance (which sometimes bordered on the downright eccentric), and this caused considerable comment about the 'wasteful extravagance' and 'excessive squandering' of resources on these buildings. The new Romeo y Julieta factory was no exception — after refurbishment and expansion, the new enterprise held a 'worthy' place among the 'wastefully extravagant' cigar factories of Havana and became a powerful visual symbol of the position firmly held by Romeo y Julieta among the leading exporters of Havana cigars.

Don Pepin was a passionate lover of horses and horse-racing, and even used this hobby to advertise his brand. He naturally called his magnificent racing mare Julieta, and traveled with her round the racetracks of Europe advertising his cigars, which thanks to Julieta's success on the track, became even more popular.

There was enormous respect for the outstanding services and original ideas displayed by Jose Rodriguez Fernandez. He was a go-ahead and acute businessman, a reliable partner, and a shining example of a charismatic personality. The Romeo y Julieta brand owed much of its success to his personal contacts and high position in society. Contemporaries, who were full of admiration for Jose Rodriguez Fernandez' talents, gave him another nickname in addition to 'Don Pepin' — Shakesperito, or 'little Shakespeare'.

Cigars for Sir Winston

In 1940, when Romeo y Julieta had reached the pinnacle of their success, Don Pepin dissolved Rodriguez, Arguelles & Co Inc., and founded the Romeo y Julieta Cigar Factory Ltd. At the time, he owned a number of other brands besides, including Don Pepin, Falman, Flor de Rodriguez, Arguelles y Cia., His Majesty, La Mar and Maria Guerrero. The latter brand was named in honour of the famous Spanish actress, with whom Don Pepin became acquainted on one of his trips to Spain.

Don Pepin died in 1954 at the age of 88, a very rich man. Over the years that he ran the factory, a huge variety of cigar formats and sizes — more than two thousand — had appeared. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were more than one thousand sizes for figurados alone, in which Romeo y Julieta had traditionally specialized. Romeo y Julieta also beat all possible records for the number of cigar bands it produced — a total of some twenty thousand at different times, two thousand of which were personal bands. The exceptional quality of Romeo y Julieta cigars was frequently noted at international exhibitions — Antwerp (1885 and 1894), Brussels (1888 and 1889), Melbourne (1888), Paris (1889 and 1900), and Liege (1907).

One particular format, subsequently known as the Churchill, was a particularly good reason for the Romeo y Julieta Factory to be proud. Cigars of this size — 178mm long with a ring gauge of 47 — were actually produced in the early part of the 20th century and known as Romeo y Julieta A and later Julieta № 2. But after the First World War, they were renamed in honour of Georges Clemenceau, the prime minister of France, under whose leadership France was one of the victorious countries and who took part in the Versailles Peace Conference. During the Second World War, Cuba considered its duty lay in providing moral support for the allies and, in particular, that famous cigar devotee, Sir Winston Churchill. Under the slogan "We've got enough cigars till victory!", several Havana factories, including Romeo y Julieta, sent Churchill a huge supply of their finest cigars. Churchill's format preference was for double coronas and Julieta № 2, and after the war he expressed the wish to visit the factory that had produced his favourite cigars. In honour of this event which took place in 1947, the directors of Romeo y Julieta renamed the Julieta № 2 format a Churchill. Other cigar brands followed suit, but it hardly needs to be said that the real Churchill cigar is a Romeo y Julieta Churchill.

Still the Best

Romeo y Julieta are medium strength cigars with a complex taste that changes imperceptibly throughout the length of the smoke. The spicy, herbal, floral, nutty and fruity tones are easily distinguished by the experienced smoker. Before smoking the famous Churchill, you can sense a light, earthy aroma with pleasant honey tones, while in the saturated smoke of a lighted cigar the teasing aromas of spices hover about the nostrils.
Connoisseurs claim that all self-respecting smokers should smoke a Romeo y Julieta Churchill at least once in their lives. But there is something for everyone here, because the choice is certainly very wide.
One of the predominant characteristics of Romeo y Julieta is their high resistance to ageing. They grow old astonishingly well and can still be maturing after more than twenty years.

Due to their popularity, sales of Romeo y Julieta are exceeded only by sales of Montecristo, a position which they still hold confidently today when they account for a little less than one fifth of the total amount of Cuban cigars sold. In the United States, where the sale of Cuban cigars is banned, Romeo y Julieta 1875 from the Dominican Republic are popular. (As happened with many other brands after the revolution, the situation regarding the rights to this famous trade mark were extremely complicated, and this resulted in the creation of a number of cigar-doubles). And although they can in no way be compared with the Cuban originals, the power of the brand name encouraged smokers to buy them.

In Russia, Romeo y Julieta acquired devoted admirers even back in Khrushchev's days, when barter agreements between the USSR and Cuba led to a flood of machine-rolled Havanas coming on to the Soviet market. At specialized forums, you can often hear the nostalgic reminiscences of our fellow- countrymen about the 'expensive Julietas' that cost one rouble fifty-five kopecks each... Today Romeo y Julietas are supplied by Habanos S.A., which tries to provide for various tastes and pockets by importing both hand-rolled and machine-rolled cigars of various formats (21 in all). Russian smokers are particularly fond of Romeo № 1, № 2 and № 3 — cigars in tubes, which make it possible for those who cannot afford to buy a whole box to enjoy that famous taste. As a result, in terms of the quantity of sales, Romeo y Julieta hold first place in Russia.

Cigar Clan 5'2007 vol.1.  Ksenya Yakovleva