Regional Edition Bolivars Arrive in United Kingdom

The Bolivar Britanicas are figurados, 5 3/8 inches long with a 48 ring gauge.
Photos/Ajay Patel

David Savona
Posted: April 11, 2012

The Bolivar Britanicas, one of the United Kingdom’s Regional Edition Cuban cigars for 2011, has finally arrived on British shores, quite later than originally intended.

The Casa del Habano in Teddington, Britain’s sole Casa del Habano, said the cigars arrived there yesterday. They will hit Britain’s other cigar shops very soon.

The cigars were originally expected to arrive last autumn.

The Bolivar Britanicas are figurados, 5 3/8 inches long with a 48 ring gauge. They are slightly plumper versions of the old Romeo y Julieta Celestiales Finos, which were the same length but had a ring gauge of 46. The old Romeos, which are no longer made, carried the Cuban factory name Britanicas.

There were 3,000 boxes made of the Bolivar Britanicas, each of them containing 10 cigars, for a total run of 30,000 cigars. They retail for £166 ($264) per box, or £16 ($26) per cigar.

One noticeable difference between these Regional Edition Cuban cigars and previous REs for the United Kingdom is the secondary silver and red bands on the smokes. They read “Exclusivo Gran Bretaña,” Spanish for “exclusive Great Britain.” All previous REs for Great Britain read “Exclusivo Reino Unido,” Spanish for “exclusive United Kingdom.”

Ajay Patel, proprietor of the Casa del Habano in Teddington, said all future REs for Britain would read Gran Bretaña. “Nobody could pronounce the Reino Unido, and nobody knew what it was unless you spoke Cuban Spanish,” he said.

For more on the new smoke, see Tuesday’s Cigar Insider.

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