Gurkha

Gurkha is the brand that more or less invented the ultra-premium cigar. The name goes back to the Gurkhas, the Nepalese soldiers famed for their bravery and their khukuri knives in the British colonial army, who lent their name to a cigar more than a century ago. The modern brand came from a chance encounter: in the late 1980s, watch dealer Kaizad Hansotia bought a dormant Gurkha label while traveling in Goa, India, meaning to hand the cigars out to clients. Instead he built an empire on opulence: elaborate boxes, rare and aged tobaccos, high prices, and more than a hundred blends. Hansotia called it the Rolls Royce of cigars, and the famously pricey His Majesty’s Reserve, infused with Louis XIII cognac, made the point. Made today mostly in the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua, Gurkha cigars sell the experience as much as the smoke.