Dunhill Cigars: A Pipe Brand's Cigar Arm

Dunhill Cigars is the heading covering the cigar arm of the London firm Alfred Dunhill, known for pipes and pipe tobacco. The firm's relationship with the Havana cigar reaches back to the start of the twentieth century, but a cigar directly bearing the "Dunhill" name only reached shelves in the mid-1980s, and it passed into history within a decade. Today the brand name in tobacco products belongs to a different group entirely.

The Early Tie to Havana

The tobacconist's shop Alfred Dunhill opened on Duke Street in London in 1907 quickly became known for its own blends and its white-dot pipes. On the cigar side, the firm's role for a long time was to be selective rather than to be a producer: before the Cuban Revolution it had distribution agreements with many Havana factories, and sizes available only at Dunhill counters were sold under the name "Selección Suprema." Brand histories also repeat, as a detail cementing the shop's reputation, that George VI and Winston Churchill were among its customers.

Three Exclusive Brands After the Revolution

After 1959 the counterparty changed but the tie did not break; agreements were now conducted with the state monopoly, Cubatabaco. According to the records, exclusive rights to three brands were granted to Dunhill, each tied to a separate Havana factory. Don Cándido, made at the Briones Montoto factory (formerly Romeo y Julieta), was the name with the oldest origin; the brand had been founded in 1935 by Cándido Vega Díaz. Don Alfredo, the product of the José Martí factory (formerly H. Upmann), was born in the 1960s and took its name from the firm's founder. The history of La Flor del Punto, made at the Partagás factory, is the least certain; it is thought to have appeared in the 1970s. The word "punto" means "dot" in Spanish, and Dunhill's exclusive cigar bands also used a white-dot emblem; whether this overlap was deliberate is not certain.

The Cuban Cigar Bearing the Dunhill Name

The cigar bearing the Dunhill name went on sale in 1984: first in Dunhill stores in ten countries, then in nearly thirty. There were eight handmade sizes: alongside the robusto-length Cabinetta and the churchill-length Estupendos, the range included a presidente over twenty-three centimeters long called Havana Club, a long panetela named Atado, a lonsdale called Malecon, a corona called Mojito, and Tubo and Veradero. A few more names appeared in the catalog but were never actually produced. The agreement had been signed in 1982; according to the records, negotiations had begun back in 1977.

What cut the series' life short was competition. Cubatabaco was producing the other top-tier private label of the period, Davidoff, at the same time, and had no intention of taking sides in the market rivalry between the two tobacconists. Sources disagree on exactly which year the agreement ended: some records give 1989, others 1991. What is consistent is that the agreement was not renewed.

After Cuba, and the Brand Changing Hands

Before the split became final, Dunhill had already considered the Canary Islands, the Dominican Republic, and Honduras for production; in the years that followed, lines blended with non-Cuban leaf were produced in the latter two countries. The firm eventually withdrew from the cigar business altogether and transferred the right to use its name on tobacco products.

This transfer is part of a larger split in the company's structure. The majority of Alfred Dunhill's shares passed to Carreras Tobacco Company in 1967; in the years that followed, the tobacco and luxury-goods arms went their separate ways. Today the pipe and luxury-goods side belongs to Richemont, while tobacco products — including the tobacco blends — belong to British American Tobacco, which acquired Rothmans International in 1999. The same name belonging to different owners across different products is a lasting source of confusion for collectors trying to trace the brand's history; a similar case is seen with the tins licensed for production in Germany.