Collection: Montecristo

In July 1935, Alonso Menéndez purchased the Particulares Factory, makers of the Particulares brand and the lesser-known Byron. Immediately after its acquisition, he created a new brand named Montecristo.

The name for the brand was inspired by the Alexandre Dumas were novel The count of Montecristo, which was supposedly a very popular choice among the torcedores (cigar rollers) in their factory to have read by the lector on the rolling floor. The Montecristo logo, consisting of a triangle of six swords surrounding a flour-de-lis, was designed by John Hunter Morris and Elkan Co. Ltd., the brand's British distributor.

In July 1936, Menéndez founded a new firm with a partner, naming it Menéndez, García y Cía. With the growing success of the Montecristo brand, the firm purchased the faltering H.Upmann Factory (created by Hermann Dietrich Unman in 1844) from J. Frankau SA in 1937 and transferred Montecristo production there. J. Frankau continued as sole distributor of the H. Upmann brand in the UK, while John Hunter Morris and Elkan Co. Ltd. was the sole distributor of Montecristo in Britain. In 1963, these firms merged to become "Hunters & Frankau", which today is the sole importer and distributor of all Cuban cigars in the UK.

Through the efforts of the Alfred Dunhill company the Montecristo brand became incredibly popular worldwide and to this day accounts for roughly one-quarter of Habanos SA's worldwide cigar sales, making it the most popular Cuban cigar in the world.

Menéndez and García fled during the Cuban Revolution, and on September 15, 1960, after which the Montecristo brand, the factory, and all assets were nationalized by the government of Fidel Castro.

Menéndez and García re-established their brand in the Canary Islands, but were later forced to quit due to trademark disputes with Cubatabaco (later known as Habanos S.A.). In the mid-1970s, the operation was moved to La Romana and released for the US market, since Cuban government rights to the brand were not recognized under American law due to the 1960 nationalization and subsequent embargo. Menéndez, García, y Cía is now owned by Altadis S.A., which controls its distribution and marketing in the United States.

With Menendez and Garcia gone after 1959, one of the top grade torcedores, José Manuel González, was promoted to floor manager and proceeded to breathe new life into the brand. In the 1970s and 1980s, five new sizes were added: the A, the Especial No. 1 and 2, the Joyita, and the Petit Tubo. Three other sizes, the Montecristo No. 6, No. 7, and B, were released but subsequently discontinued, though the B can occasionally be found in very small releases each year in Cuba. Through the 1970s and 1980s, Cuban Montecristo continued to rise in popularity among cigar smokers, becoming one of that nations’s top selling cigar lines.