Hoyo de Monterrey (Hon)

Hoyo de Monterrey has one of the most layered histories of any non-Cuban brand, rooted directly in the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution. The original Hoyo de Monterrey was founded in 1865 by Don José Gener, a Spanish immigrant who named the brand after his tobacco farm in Cuba's Vuelta Abajo region, the terrain's name literally translating as "the hole of Monterrey," a reference to the concave, moisture-rich land prized for growing premium leaf. The brand became one of Cuba's most celebrated cigars and was famously associated with Red Auerbach, the Boston Celtics coach and executive who was known for lighting a Hoyo de Monterrey victory cigar before the final buzzer of games his team was winning.
When the Cuban Revolution forced the nationalization of the island's cigar industry, Fernando Palicio, who owned the brand names, eventually sold the U.S. rights to Dan Blumenthal and Frank Llaneza of Villazon and Company in the mid-1960s. Llaneza, a Tampa-born son of a Cuban cigar maker who had spent years building relationships with the best leaf growers in the Americas, established Honduras-American Tobacco S.A. (HATSA) in Danlí in 1964, the first export-oriented cigar factory in Honduras, and began rolling Hoyo de Monterrey for the American market in 1969 under the guidance of master blender Estelo Padrón. Llaneza's goal was not merely to replicate the Cuban cigar but to create something that, as he put it, gave smokers a remembrance of Cuba, a full-flavored, heavier profile deliberately different from the mild Dominican cigars that dominated the market at the time.
The blend in this database, using an Ecuadorian wrapper or Connecticut Broadleaf maduro over Dominican, Honduran, and Nicaraguan filler with a Connecticut binder, represents the core Hoyo de Monterrey as it evolved through the Villazon and General Cigar eras. General Cigar acquired Villazon in 1996 for $81.4 million during the height of the cigar boom and continues to produce the brand today at the HATSA factory in Cofradia, Honduras. The lineup covers 25 vitolas across natural and maduro expressions, from the compact Demitasse and Margaritas up through the massive 8.5 x 52 President, spanning nearly every classic format in the traditional cigar vocabulary.