Embargo still blocks sales of Cuban cigars

“Got any Cuban cigars yet?”

Customers have been asking the question at tobacco shops around Northern Colorado and the Boulder Valley this week ever since President Obama announced Tuesday that the United States would restore diplomatic relations with Cuba and ease the travel and trade restrictions that have been in place against the communist-controlled island nation 90 miles off Florida.

“Any other time before today, it was a joke,” said Pam Orzell, manager of Al’s Newsstand and Tobacco Shop, 177 N. College Ave. in Fort Collins. “People would say, ‘Where are your Cubans? You’re hiding them somewhere, aren’t you! Back of the humidor?”

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But now it’s no joke, she said.

“We’ve gotten a few people asking when we’ll get some in,” she said, “and I’m sure as the weekend progresses, we’ll hear a lot more.”

Responses from clerks at other stores in Boulder, Greeley, Longmont and Loveland, who were reached by telephone on Thursday, were similar. The stores’ answer, in each case, has had to be that they don’t know yet.

When Americans will be able to buy Cuban cigars at their local tobacco shop isn’t clear. The U.S. embargo on importing Cuban goods is still mostly in place. Americans who are authorized to travel to Cuba, however, can bring back $400 worth of goods including up to $100 each worth of tobacco and alcohol products. That’s not really a lot – maybe two or three Cohiba Corono Especiales, which were Fidel Castro’s signature stogie before he gave up smoking.

Congress, which put the embargo in place, would have to vote to end it, and Obama on Wednesday called for “an honest and serious debate” about doing so on Capitol Hill.

“I don’t see Congress working very hard to end the embargo,” said Terry Gallagher Jr., president of Gunbarrel-based Smoker Friendly International LLC, which has run tobacco stores in the area for nearly 24 years. “They tried it last year, but it got no support and it died.”

Cigar aficionados debate whether the mystique surrounding Cuban cigars is based on how good they are or simply that they’ve been banned for so long.

“Cuban tobacco has a very distinct flavor that’s different from tobacco everywhere else. It tends to be extremely strong,” said Jeff Borysiewicz, president of Corona Cigar Co., one of the largest cigar retailers in the United States, in an interview with the Washington Post – a flavor traditionally attributed to a unique characteristic of the island’s soil. “The day Cuban cigars can be sold on the shelf here, people will buy them based on that, on their merits, and not on the whole mystique.”

For Phil Ledbetter, general manager of Up Down Cigar in Chicago, it’s a lot simpler.
“The mystique behind them is that we can’t have them and we want them,” he said.

“It’s a combination,” said Gallagher. “A lot of the Cuban brands left Cuba in the early ’60s after Castro took over … Personally, I think makers in the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Nicaragua all make as good or better cigars than Cuba does. Their consistency has been better. A lot of their blends originated from Cuban seeds.
“But that forbidden-fruit aspect is really a push,” he said.

Like wines and whiskeys, it comes down to personal taste, Gallagher said. “Do you like it? If it’s good to you, then it’s a good stick – a good cigar.”

If and when Cuban cigars become available for import, Gallagher said, his chain would be interested. But until Congress acts to lift the embargo, customers will keep asking.

“A lot of people have been asking,” said a sales clerk at the Smoker Friendly store at 1620 30th St. in Boulder. “I even had a guy from Cuba who came in today and said he couldn’t wait until we could sell some real cigars.”