My Father Cigars Tabacos Beaz

You could easily fill entire books about this cigar brand, such is the tradition and success that mark the Garcia family's story—not just in recent decades. Family patriarch José “Don” Pepin Garcia was born in Cuba in 1950, where he learned and perfected the art of cigar making at a very young age. In his hometown of Baez—which also gave its name to this cigar series—located in the province of Villa Clara east of Havana, he started rolling cigars at the age of 11 to help support his family. Just two years later, he officially worked as a torcedor at the local Tabacalera Felix Rodriguez. Don Pepin developed some of the iconic blends for Cuban cigars from Cohiba, Montecristo, and Partagas. In the late 1990s, he was also responsible for quality control at Tabacalera El Laguito, where Cohiba cigars are produced!

Tabacos Baez Cigars: Tradition and Success of the Garcia Family

The Garcia family left their native Cuba in 2002 and emigrated to the Sunshine State of Florida in the southeastern United States. There, they opened a small tabacalera in 2003, and demand for their products grew so rapidly that just three years later they launched a significantly larger tabacalera in Nicaragua. Today, between 8–10 million cigars are rolled there annually. The My Father Cigars factory is considered one of the most modern and largest in Nicaragua.

The Tabacos Baez brand was originally produced in Cuba by Don Pepin's uncle and was later reintroduced by the Garcia family in Nicaragua in the 2000s. There used to be a longfiller version, which lacked the SF on the band, as well as a version with an H. on the cigar band, denoting the wrapper leaf, as it’s commonly referred to in the U.S. I clearly remember the brand—an earlier importer of My Father Cigars had already brought it to Germany some time ago. The current design has been in production since 2018. To our knowledge, it’s at least the third cigar series made in the “Cuban sandwich style,” or—depending on your perspective—what’s referred to as a mediumfiller or shortfiller. Both the Ashton Benchmade cigars and the Tatuaje Series P, also produced by the family, were introduced well before the Tabacos Baez cigars.

My Father Cigars: The History of Tabacos Baez Cigars

At the 2018 cigar trade show in the U.S., the Garcias showcased vintage bands and box designs from the cigars originally made in Cuba by José “Pepin” Garcia’s uncle—cigars that were then marketed under the name Tobacco Baez. The Tabacos Baez S.F. cigars smoke more like a longfiller; in our test cigar, the ash held firmly and only needed to be tapped off in the usual way. Apparently, the filler blend includes not only smaller cuttings but also full tobacco leaves, helping to deliver this level of smoking experience. For a My Father Cigars cigar, it was surprisingly mild and not peppery at all. All components of the cigar—from the wrapper to the binder to the filler—are entirely Nicaraguan.