January/February 2009 | Cigar Aficionado

In this issue

Cuba • January/February 2009

The newest Cigar Aficionado features special reports on Cuba and U.S. relations. A foreign policy expert explains why and how the embargo should be lifted while James Suckling writes about the last 50 years of the Cuban cigar industry. This issue also brings readers our highly anticipated Top 25 Cigars of 2008 list, as well as 78 cigar ratings with notes. Also, check out an exclusive interview with the father-and-son team of Alberto and Alejandro Turrent, the men who run Te-Amo.

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Features

Memo to President Obama

Just before Barack Obama was sworn into office as the 44th president of the United States in 2009, we published our January/February issue that dedicated its pages to Cuba and …

Cigars and Cuba: 50 Years of History

Alejandro Robaina walks slowly with a gentle shuffle from his bedroom to the porch of his pink stucco house, just outside the western Cuban town of San Luís, to greet visitors. …

Talking with Castro

In late August of 1994, the Nobel Prize—winning novelist Gabriel García Márquez traveled to Martha's Vineyard for a dinner with President Bill Clinton. "Gabo wanted to come and …

Inside Havana

Change is a relative word in Havana. The status quo generally prevails in Cuba, with the exception of natural disasters like the three hurricanes in 2008. For example, a regular …

Cigars

Te-Amo's Alberto and Alejandro Turrent

The father-son team that runs Mexico's largest cigar-tobacco operation and makes the famous Te-Amo brand discusses the family's 110-year history of growing in that country.

After the Storms

Two hurricanes ravaged Cuba's main tobacco growing regions last summer, clouding the outlook for the future supply of cigars

Ratings from this Issue

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Saint Luis Rey Churchill

Issue Date: February 1, 2009

points

Padrón Serie 1926 80 Years Natural

Issue Date: February 1, 2009

points

H. Upmann Connoisseur No. 1

Issue Date: February 1, 2009

points

H. Upmann No. 2

Issue Date: February 1, 2009

Up Front

Time to Change Our Cuba Policy

History occurs in two ways: across long periods of slow-moving, apparently meaningless, events, or sometimes, in gut-wrenching cataclysms. Change occurs in both instances. Cuba …