J.C. Newman

J.C. Newman is the oldest family-owned premium cigar maker in America, and after more than 130 years it is still run by the Newmans, now in their fourth generation. Julius Caesar Newman, a young immigrant from Austria-Hungary, started rolling cigars in Cleveland in 1895, and the company later moved to Tampa, where it still works out of El Reloj, a 1910 factory that is the last of its kind in the country. Much of the Newman story is tied to the Fuente family: a 1986 handshake led Fuente to handcraft Newman’s Dominican cigars, including the prestige Diamond Crown line. Other J.C. Newman cigars like Brick House and Perla del Mar are rolled at the family’s PENSA factory in Estelí, Nicaragua. Tradition is the throughline.