In a way we can thank the voyage of Christopher Columbus in the year 1492 for making Europeans aware of tobacco products. The well kept logs of Columbus speak about his sailors observing Cuban Indians make and smoke a primitive type of cigar using dried tobacco leaves. The idea of smoking dried leaves must have seemed peculiar to them since in their country the practice was unheard of. It is interesting to note though that the tobacco plant was only indigenous to the Americas and not in the old world.
Once the New World was discovered the use of tobacco was spread by travelling sailors when they returned to their native countries, Jean Nicot , a French diplomat was shown a tobacco plant growing in a friends’ garden and was told of it’s great healing powers. After receiving cuttings of Cuban tobacco plants , he started growing them in the garden of the French Embassy. It was there that he started experimenting with the healing properties of this plant and even wrote about it’s wonders in the year 1560. Nicot is then credited as giving his name to the botanical name for this plant which is Nicotiana tabacum.
The smoking of tobacco had become a familiar habit throughout Europe by the mid-16th century. At about the same time tobacco started to be grown as a commercial crop in America with the first tobacco plantation in Virginia.
Cigars, shaped in the form that we know them today, were first made in Spain in the early 18th century, using the Cuban tobacco much as the sailors had observed the Cuban Indians doing. During that time period, cigars were not exported from Cuba
Once the cigar became a luxury item and were being heavily taxed in Britain there was a demand for higher quality cigars throughout Europe. Spanish cigars which were being grown from Cuban seed were replaced by cigars made in Cuba which was then a Spanish colony. Cigars, Europeans soon discovered travelled much better than loose tobacco. Americans and Europeans were only smoking tobacco in pipes during this time period. The cigar as we know it today was introduced to North America arrived in 1762, when Israel Putnam, an American general in the Revolutionary War returned from Cuba, with an assortment of cigars, from Havana, Cuba and a coveted amount of Cuban tobacco seed.
During the Civil War in America cigar smoking rose in popularity and individual brands started to emerge by the late 19th century. At that time cigar smoking became a status symbol in America.
So just what is it that makes the Cuban Cigar so popular and sought after even with America placing an embargo on it in 1962? Perhaps it is a case of forbidden fruit for some but to others, the Cuban Cigar is the best because of two things, the soil the tobacco is grown in and the long traditional history of how they are made and rolled.
The series has 16 teams organized into two zones (or zonas), Oriental and Occidental. Each team represents a province in Cuba, and two teams represent the capital city of Havana. The regular season is comprised of 90 games and runs from November through March or April. At the end of the season, the top eight teams participate in a tournament for the league championship title.