2025 Cigar Insider Retailer Survey: Top Brands In America
It’s pretty easy to find out the country’s best-selling books, highest-grossing films and top-charting recording artists for each year. But what if you wanted to know the best-selling and hottest cigar brands in the United States? We have the data. Cigar Insider—the twice-monthly newsletter from Cigar Aficionado—polled 65 tobacconists representing 126 stores around the United States, and according to their feedback, the hottest brand in America comes from Arturo Fuente Cigar Co.: the Fuente Fuente OpusX. It’s a repeat of the last two years, as retailers in 2023 and 2024 told us the same thing—OpusX is the hottest cigar they sell. Our survey, however, didn’t stop there. We also asked tobacconists about their best-selling brands by volume.
Tobacconists spanning the 50 states were asked to name three brands as their hottest—the cigar brands requested most often by consumers. Hot brands, however, are not necessarily best sellers, as the hottest cigars aren’t always in stock, so this question is one of consumer demand, rather than sales volume, which we’ll get to later on. Seeing OpusX as the winner was no surprise given the mystique, distinction and high quality of the brand. The Fuente Fuente OpusX Reserva d’Chateau was Cigar Aficionado’s 2023 Cigar of the Year and an OpusX also appeared in the Top 10 for 2025.
After, perhaps, Cohiba, there is no name in the cigar world that evokes as much luxury and exclusivity as OpusX. Production numbers are low and release dates throughout the year are sporadic, but OpusX still tends to sell out quickly, and remains in high demand despite being on the market for 30 years. It was named the hottest brand by 60 percent of the retailers we polled.
Despite its high price point, the cigar has been highly sought after since it debuted in 1995, and carries with it an interesting backstory. Its creator, Carlos “Carlito” Fuente Jr., defied conventional wisdom by growing Dominican wrappers after nearly every industry expert at the time warned that it couldn’t be done. For Fuente, making an all-Dominican cigar was the only way to boast a true product of origin, an idea that had nagged at him ever since a French retailer once quipped that Fuente was merely an assembler of tobaccos—a négociant—and not a full-fledged cigarmaker.
The mission was to find the right seeds and secure the right farms. If pinot noir thrives best in France’s Burgundy appellation, and the world’s most flavorful tomatoes come from the small San Marzano region of southern Italy, then it could be said that Chateau de la Fuente in Bonao is one of the finest plots of land suited for Dominican wrapper—almost as much a rarity in the industry now as it was 30 years ago.
When OpusX was first released, it was a full-bodied cigar in a market that favored milder smokers. To help meet demand, Fuente has since expanded the series with additional blends at dialed-down strength levels, so they are a bit more accessible than they were in the ’90s and 2000s. He’s developed different seed types suited to his farm and uses lower-priming wrappers as the basis for different OpusX blends. The cigars are still regarded as some of the finest in the world—and our ratings support the notion. Two cigars in the OpusX line have been named cigar of the year, and smokes from the OpusX line are frequently on our Top 25.
Mirroring last year, Padrón was named as the second-hottest brand in America (50.8 percent). The current reigning Cigar of the Year is the Padrón 60th Anniversary Perfecto, a tapered, shapely figurado that commemorates the company’s 60th anniversary. Padrón cigars started as an affordable mainstay in Miami, but the brand didn’t get true critical acclaim until it released blends made with more aged tobaccos. When Padrón launched its 1964 Anniversary Series in 1994, the company ascended to a new echelon, as its cigars went from everyday smokes to luxury products. More lines with aged tobacco followed like the Serie 1926 and the Family Reserve. All of Padrón’s top-tier cigars are based on hearty Nicaraguan leaf. Padrón’s attention to fermentation and understanding of Nicaraguan terroir and its tobacco is evident in its track record of high scores with this publication.
The third-hottest brand comes from My Father Cigars. Like Fuente and Padrón, My Father is a family-owned company and has produced a Cigar of the Year on more than one occasion, most recently for 2024. In the early 2000s, the Garcia family started modestly in a tiny factory in Miami, purchasing tobacco whenever they could. Today, My Father Cigars has expanded to a formidable operation. The Garcias not only produce cigars in Miami, Nicaragua and Honduras, but they also grow and process high-quality tobacco in Honduras and Nicaragua as well.
Liga Privada, the full-bodied brand from Drew Estate, ranked fourth. Liga Privada has a devoted following and is known for its powerful blends and dark, near-black wrappers. The core line, Liga Privada No. 9, first appeared in 2007, followed by the T52. Both have a heady blend of Brazilian, Nicaraguan and Honduran tobacco, but T52 is driven by a Habano-seed wrapper grown in Connecticut, while the original line is wrapped in Connecticut broadleaf. The Liga Privada T52 Corona Viva was ranked No. 11 on Cigar Aficionado’s Top 25 list of 2025.
Appearing in fifth place is Davidoff, a Dominican brand with corporate ownership in Switzerland and a large, sometimes pricey portfolio. Known among smokers as “the white label,” the main Davidoff line is one of elegance and European sensibility, as it’s been competing on the international market long before other non-Cuban manufacturers ventured overseas. Parent company Oettinger-Davidoff was never shy about charging higher prices—any cigar bearing the Davidoff name has always been positioned as a luxury product. They are made in the Dominican Republic at the Cigars Davidoff factory, and include the white label Signature series, black label Nicaragua series and other variations such as the Millennium Blend and Winston Churchill The Late Hour.
Two brands tied for No. 6: La Flor Dominicana from the Dominican Republic, and Perdomo from Nicaragua. La Flor gives the smoker a strong sense of place, as most of its cigars consist predominantly of full-bodied tobaccos grown at the La Canela farm in the Dominican Republic. The dry, hot climate is well-suited to the powerful tobaccos that give these cigars distinction. Perdomo is vertically integrated as well, cultivating much of its own tobacco in Nicaragua and producing its cigars in Estelí, Nicaragua’s epicenter of premium cigar manufacturing.
Small boutique brand Foundation Cigar Co. took the No. 8 position. It’s owned by Nicholas Melillo, who runs the company on the edge of a broadleaf tobacco farm in the Connecticut River Valley where Foundation is headquartered. He’s been on his own for a decade now, and his popular brands include Olmec and Aksum (made by A.J. Fernandez in Nicaragua) and The Wise Man (made in Nicaragua by My Father Cigars).
Oliva and Plasencia Cigars came in ninth, rounding out the list of hottest brands in the United States.
The Best-Selling Brands Of 2025
Simply stated, best-selling brands are the brands that retailers move the most of by volume, and this year, no brand brought in as much business as Padrón. Like last year and the year before, more retailers named more of these Nicaraguan cigars as best sellers than any other: 53.8 percent.
One of the industry’s most prestigious and decorated Nicaraguan cigar companies, Padrón holds the record for achieving Cigar of the Year more times than any other cigarmaker: five times in two decades. The cigars consist of tobaccos grown out in the open sunlight without any cheese-cloth netting to shade and filter the sun’s rays. The result is heavier, stronger leaves, a medium that Padrón prefers. The company is remarkable in its ability to convey power, control and complexity in its blending, and it offers a range of brands. The Dámaso line leans mild; the core line (“brown label”) offers value; and cigars like the 1964 Anniversary Series and Family Reserve are richly elegant with their blends of aged tobacco.
Fuente ranked a very close second at 52.3 percent. These two family-owned entities have gone back and forth, both topping our Cigar Insider retailer polls for years. Fuente offers an extensive variety of blends and price points. While lines like Chateau Fuente and Rosado Sungrown Magnum R offer tremendous value, its higher-end smokes include the Don Carlos line (featuring a Cameroon wrapper) and the all-Dominican Fuente Fuente OpusX line, one of the most coveted cigars in the world. All Fuente cigars are made in the Dominican Republic at Tabacalera A. Fuente y Cia.
Third place is more a collection of well-known brands, lines and series than one brand particular. Drew Estate was named by 32.3 percent of our retailers as their best-seller. There’s no Drew Estate branded cigar, but the company produces such well-known lines as Liga Privada No. 9, Undercrown and Herrera Esteli. The cigars are all stylized with eye-catching bands and boxes meant to reflect the bohemian nature of Drew Estate’s Subculture Studios in Nicaragua, where it conceptualizes many of the company’s designs.
Perdomo took the No. 4 position with 24.6 percent of retailers naming these Nicaraguan cigars as their best-selling brands. My Father ranked fifth; Davidoff ranked sixth; and Oliva and Rocky Patel came in at No. 7 and 8, respectively. Ashton and J.C. Newman tied for the No. 9 spot. Both those companies have diversified portfolios. Their older, Dominican legacy lines like Ashton and Diamond Crown are made in the Dominican Republic by Arturo Fuente Cigar Co. while their newer brands such as Ashton’s San Cristobal and J.C. Newman’s Brick House are rolled in Nicaragua.
The rankings for best-selling cigars and hottest cigars are different, but you’ll notice that they both include many of the same cigar manufacturers. This is neither an anomaly nor is it unusual. These cigarmakers have been in the business for decades and are at the very top of their craft. They have cultivated loyal followings by delivering quality and consistency year after year, and the retailer feedback is strong evidence of their commitment to consumers. The formula is simple: make great cigars of distinction and people will continue buying them.
To see the Cigar Insider retailer survey on what cigar retailers had to say, click here.
To see the Cigar Insider retailer survey on best-selling sizes, click here.
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