Continental Creates New Line with Classic Cuban Vitolas

[JohnS]

Creating Non-Cuban cigars that mimic lesser-utilised, yet traditional vitolas such as the Short Panetela, Double Coronas and Diademas sure does sound interesting. Hopefully, the cigars will be (interesting too)!

Continental Creates New Line with Classic Cuban Vitolas

September 19, 2025  - Simon Lundh 

Hungarian cigar company, Continental Tobacco, came out with two new cigar lines at this year’s InterTabac. Co-owner Peter Fuzi was especially excited by one of them.     

“The Essenze Tradición line has three of my favorite traditional Cuban vitolas, Short Panatela, Lusitania and Diadema,” he says. “Actually, our Diadema is 235 millimeters long, so it’s super hard to make. Only a few rollers know how to make them. They all have Habano wrappers, but different binder and fillers than the original Habano lines.”

With this line, as the name tells you, they wanted to go back to classic Cuban cigar making. 

“The boxes are as simple as we can make them, because we didn’t want to take the attention away from the tobacco itself.”

The other line is a bundle cigar called The Essenze Club. 

“It comes with a super premium Connecticut or a Maduro wrapper, but we can offer them at a relatively consumer-friendly prize because we use sandwich filler. This is currently very attractive for most European distributors.”

Source: https://www.cigarjournal.com/continental-creates-new-line-with-classic-cuban-vitolas/

[BrightonCorgi]

What is sandwich filler and is that uncommon in today's cigars?

[Havanaaddict]

A Cuban Sandwich Cigar is a type of mixed-filler cigar that earns its name from its method of construction. Each cigar begins with a blend of short to medium filler tobacco leaves, or leaves which do not span the entire length of the cigar. This blend is then rolled, or “sandwiched,” by hand inside rich, long filler leaves, and finished with the binder and wrapper leaves.

For generations, mixed-filler cigars were used merely as a method of ridding a cigarmaker of tobacco trimmings and bits left over from making the prized long-filler cigars, and as a result mixed-fillers were often cheaply constructed, cheap to buy, and earned a reputation as the pariah in the world of premium cigars.