Cuba’s New $258 Montecristo

Source from:  Cigar Aficionado 04/24/2019

The Cuban Montecristo Gran Pirámides, part of the limited Colección Habanos series, have finally started to reach retail shops across the globe—and they’re not cheap. Although this release is technically the 2017 edition, shop owners have only begun to see them this month.

At 6 1/4 inches by 57 ring gauge, the Montecristo Gran Pirámide is a longer, thicker and beefed up version of the classic Montecristo No. 2, (6 1/8 by 52). The cigars come 20 per box.

Like all cigars in the Colección Habanos series, the Gran Pirámides are packaged in a box that looks like a book. Each release is called a tomo, or volume.

“Overdue, but worth the wait,” said Mitchell Orchant, managing director of C.Gars Ltd. in London. He owns many shops throughout the U.K. including a La Casa del Habano shop in Chester, England. “It’s not easy to keep up with the new releases, as there seems to be little pattern to what we get and when we get them, but at least when we do finally get them, demand outstrips supply.”

Only 2,000 boxes were produced, and as you can probably surmise, a Cuban release this limited can be quite expensive. London’s James J. Fox store sells the Montecristo Gran Pirámides for ￡4,000 (about $5,175) per box, which averages out to around ￡200 per cigar, or about $258 each. That’s a pricey pirámide.

Habanos S.A., the Cuban monopoly and global distributor of Cuban cigars, started this program in 2001 with the Cuaba Salamones. It has released a new Colección Habanos cigar almost every year since.  Enditem