Cuban Regional Edition Counts by Brand. Any surprises?

[El Presidente]

Number of Regional Releases by marque.  I haven't checked this list but I assume it is correct or very close. 

Any surprises that stand out? 

 

Rank	Marque / Brand	Releases
1	Ramón Allones	37
2	Bolívar	35
3	Juan López	27
4	Por Larrañaga	25
5	Punch	23
6	El Rey del Mundo	18
7	Diplomáticos	16
8	La Gloria Cubana	16
9	Saint Luis Rey	10
10	Quai d'Orsay	10
11	La Flor de Cano	9
12	Sancho Panza	9
13	San Cristóbal de la Habana	6
14	Vegas Robaina	6
15	Edmundo Dantes	3
16	Fonseca	3
17	Rafael González	2
18	La Escepción	2
19	Cuaba	1

[JohnS]

No love for Rafael Gonzalez, yet more so for Ramon Allones, Bolivar and Juan Lopez. It stands to reason, as distributors need to make a return on their investment and this has meant that those marcas that identify as being more stronger or bolder, in general, were favoured.

That being said, if milder marcas aren't as popular, then seeing the Por Larranaga up this list so high does surprise me. Perhaps that is because it has its fans in some European regions (such as the United Kingdom, for example).

[NYGuido]

Is it general practice that they never release a regional under what Cuban Cigar Website calls a "global" brand? I suppose that never fully clicked until now.

[MrFolgers]

Anyone know if there has been any discussion on more releases for Mexico via Edmundo Dantes? 

[BrightonCorgi]

Nothing stands out to me, unless I am missing something. 

 

[MrFolgers]

Um, Prez... you're clearly also missing Cohiba from this list: 

[Lucas Buck]

2 hours ago, NYGuido said:

Is it general practice that they never release a regional under what cubancigarwebsite calls a "global" brand? I suppose that never fully clicked until now.

Global brands have always been excluded. Since the others have mostly been stripped bare it makes sense they are available as regionals. 

[NYGuido]

Just now, Lucas Buck said:

Global brands have always been excluded. Since the others have mostly been stripped bare it makes sense they are available as regionals. 

Thank you! I didn’t know this and appreciate your explaining it. 

[NeoGeo]

Por Larranaga and SCDLH are both standing out for me. I only remember a few from PL, and definitely feels like there's been more than 6 from SCDLH over the years. LGC seems high to me too, but maybe there also didn't used to be as much hype over regionals as there is in recent years. I think in today's market with cigars being priced so high already, the regionals get a lot more attention for the "flash" than they did say even 5+ years ago.

[BrightonCorgi]

Do you think naming it one marca or another really drives the sales of a Regional? Or is it the cigar/presentation itself and the marca is secondary? 

I like it when the lesser marca offers, but it's never been of any consideration whether I'll buy it or not. There's as little expectation that it'll smoke like what I associate that marca to be like as well.

[NeoGeo]

10 hours ago, BrightonCorgi said:

Do you think naming it one marca or another really drives the sales of a Regional? Or is it the cigar/presentation itself and the marca is secondary? 

I like it when the lesser marca offers, but it's never been of any consideration whether I'll buy it or not. There's as little expectation that it'll smoke like what I associate that marca to be like as well.

I wonder this too. I also wonder if with more limited vitolas available in regular production, they factor in the vitola nostalgia factor for older collectors and the "oooh...ahh..." factor for folks newer to the CC world. 

[ATGroom]

15 hours ago, NYGuido said:

Is it general practice that they never release a regional under what Cuban Cigar Website calls a "global" brand? I suppose that never fully clicked until now.

"Global" is Habanos' term, not CCW's. There is an explanation of the categories at this top of this page. https://www.cubancigarwebsite.com/cigar/history

The way REs work is that each year Habanos selects 5-6 brands that are available for regionals from the Value and Other categories. The idea is basically to promote growth in these smaller brands.

Once this list is out, distributors have about 6 months to figure out what sizes they want and apply for them. The more you can give it a story the better (eg "this celebrates our 40th anniversary with a recreation of the first cigar sold in the country" kind of thing). Habanos approves or rejects. If distributors want special bands or packaging they have to figure all this out themselves and supply it to Habanos before production begins.

The big distributors that have multiple countries in their territory are basically guaranteed two releases, one for their main territory and one for a specific country (eg Asia Pacific and Thailand).

Since 2019 you're not allowed to repeat same brand in the same country for 5 years.

For the small distributors and the sub-distributors they aren't guaranteed a release and there is a lot of politicking that goes on over who is granted one.

These days allocations of regular cigars are very limited and more or less everything sells out easily, so it's a bit of a no-brainer for every distributor to apply for every regional they can as it gives them a guaranteed quantity of high margin cigars.

[NYGuido]

4 minutes ago, ATGroom said:

"Global" is Habanos' term, not CCW's. There is an explanation of the categories at this top of this page. https://www.cubancigarwebsite.com/cigar/history

The way REs work is that each year Habanos selects 5-6 brands that are available for regionals from the Value and Other categories. The idea is basically to promote growth in these smaller brands.

Once this list is out, distributors have about 6 months to figure out what sizes they want and apply for them. The more you can give it a story the better (eg "this celebrates our 40th anniversary with a recreation of the first cigar sold in the country" kind of thing). Habanos approves or rejects. If distributors want special bands or packaging they have to figure all this out themselves and supply it to Habanos before production begins.

The big distributors that have multiple countries in their territory are basically guaranteed two releases, one for their main territory and one for a specific country (eg Asia Pacific and Thailand).

Since 2019 you're not allowed to repeat same brand in the same country for 5 years.

For the small distributors and the sub-distributors they aren't guaranteed a release and there is a lot of politicking that goes on over who is granted one.

These days allocations of regular cigars are very limited and more or less everything sells out easily, so it's a bit of a no-brainer for every distributor to apply for every regional they can as it gives them a guaranteed quantity of high margin cigars.

This is incredibly helpful. Thank you, Alex!

[joeypots]

No Cohiba.

[BrightonCorgi]

Considering @ATGroom's explanation, I'd like to see the distributors have 'Distributor only' label and branding. Make it marca agnostic. That would truly be a unique and cool release.

[ha_banos]

4 hours ago, BrightonCorgi said:

Considering @ATGroom's explanation, I'd like to see the distributors have 'Distributor only' label and branding. Make it marca agnostic. That would truly be a unique and cool release.

How many do we have? We have 5th avenida which print the distributor on the band in some cases.

 

 

[BrightonCorgi]

4 hours ago, ha_banos said:

How many do we have? We have 5th avenida which print the distributor on the band in some cases.

I was thinking something with more pizazz than the 2nd ring. Why make it a Punch or RA when they're not true to the marca? 5th Ave "fill in the blank" is good enough.   

[El Presidente]

On 3/3/2026 at 11:03 AM, BrightonCorgi said:

Do you think naming it one marca or another really drives the sales of a Regional? 

I'm guessing La Gloria Cubana Regional in say a Robusto is a 100X bigger seller than Vegueros Robusto Regional. 

El Rey Del Mundo Regional would be a 30X bigger seller than a Cuaba Regional.

Ramon Allones trumps Rafael Gonzalez 30:1 

etc, etc. 

 

[KCCubano]

3 hours ago, BrightonCorgi said:

I was thinking something with more pizazz than the 2nd ring. Why make it a Punch or RA when they're not true to the marca? 5th Ave "fill in the blank" is good enough.   

I have smoked many RA REs over the years and I find they are very true to the Ramon Allones DNA. At least for me. 

[El Presidente]

1 hour ago, KCCubano said:

I have smoked many RA REs over the years and I find they are very true to the Ramon Allones DNA. At least for me. 

I agree KC. I think most regionals are true to DNA. That reflects a conscious effort being made to do so. 

Edicion Limitadas on the other hand...