Byron

Byron reaches back to 1848, when José and Eusebio Alfonso rolled a cigar in Havana and named it for Lord Byron, the English Romantic poet and devoted cigar smoker. By some accounts it was among the first brands to wear a printed band with its name on it. The cigar disappeared decades later, and in 1998 a descendant of the founders, Nelson Alfonso, brought it back through his Selected Tobacco house, the same outfit behind Atabey. Made in Costa Rica, Byron is built for patience: the tobacco is aged for years before rolling and years again afterward in cedar and French oak. The blend stays mostly undisclosed, wrapped in Ecuadorian leaf over Nicaraguan and Peruvian filler. Sorted into lines by century, from the 19th to the 21st, Byron cigars are a refined, creamy luxury smoke.