Arturo Fuente

Arturo Fuente built its name on a cigar much of the industry said was impossible: a premium smoke wrapped entirely in tobacco grown in the Dominican Republic. That cigar is the Fuente Fuente OpusX, created by Carlos “Carlito” Fuente Jr. in 1995 on the family’s own Chateau de la Fuente estate, and it changed how the world saw Dominican leaf for good. The family has been at this since 1912, when Arturo Fuente Sr. rolled his first cigars in Tampa. Across four generations the company weathered a devastating fire and the Cuban embargo before settling in Santiago. Alongside OpusX, the Hemingway line brought back the classic figurado shape, and Don Carlos honors the late patriarch. For collectors, Arturo Fuente cigars are the Dominican benchmark, and the rest tend to get measured against them.