Cuba’s Partagás Línea Maestra: Who Has It And Who Doesn’t
Back in early 2023, at the yearly Habanos Festival in Cuba, the Partagás Línea Maestra was unveiled. It was positioned as a super-premium extension of the Partagás brand much like Cohiba Behike, Romeo y Julieta Línea de Oro and Montecristo Línea 1935. But after nearly a year and a half, the pricey new Partagás cigars have only begun trickling into the market—and some countries are still waiting.
So what makes it special? According to Habanos S.A., all the tobacco in this brand comes exclusively from the San Luís region of Pinar del Río, Cuba’s famed tobacco-growing province. Such specificity is a first for the company. Also of note are the cigars’ blue bands and shaped heads. The tapered, belicoso-style heads on these cigars are unusual, and go by a host of names: No. 109, campana (which translates to “bell”) or cabeza tumbada, because it resembles a drop. It’s the kind of head normally only seen on Regional Edition cigars (and a few anniversary humidors), but not on any brands in regular production. The 109 format originated with Partagás, so the conical heads are a reference to the brand’s history.
Línea Maestra comes in three sizes: Origen, measuring 6 1/8 inches by 46 ring gauge; Rito, at 6 5/8 by 52 and Maestro, a 5 1/4-by-56 fat belicoso.
Hong Kong is a good starting point, as all three sizes are available there. Unsurprisingly, they are expensive. Origen has a suggested retail price of HK$660 ($84.50); Rito, HK$830 ($106) and Maestro, HK$756 ($97).
Stores in Switzerland are offering them as well, however they did not receive the standard 20-count boxes. Rather, Swiss retailers are selling three-count sampler packs that contain one of each size. The samplers are the same gift sets passed out at the 2023 Habanos Festival and have a retail price of 450 Swiss francs or a little more than $500, which averages out to approximately 150 Swiss francs per cigar, or $168 each.
Germany has received the same sampler sets, and they retail for 450 euro each (about $490). The country’s Habanos distributor 5th Avenue Products expects the full 20-count boxes to arrive in the near future.
If you happen to be in Chile’s capital city of Santiago in South America, you’ll find some Línea Maestra on the shelves of its Casa del Habano shop, but just one size. Habanos only sent the Maestro to that part of the world, where it retails for 88,000 Chilean pesos, or about $95 apiece. No specific date is set for Chile to receive the rest of the sizes.
In Lebanon, the Beirut Duty-Free cigar shop, located within Rafic Hariri International Airport, is known the world over for being a cigar lover’s destination. All the sizes can be found here for the following prices: Rito ($104), Maestro ($94) and Origin ($87.40)
Meanwhile, major Cuban cigar markets like Spain, France and the United Kingdom have yet to start selling any of the sizes. Spanish distributor Tabacalera is hoping for a full release in September. Customers in smaller markets like Canada and Portugal are also waiting, as neither of the regional distributors have released any sizes of the new Partagás.
For a rating on the entire Partagás Línea Maestra series, see a future issue of Cigar Insider.
If you’ve seen these cigars in another part of the world, tell us where in the comments section below.
