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The history of General Cigar Company, Inc. is the story of one family and its love of tobacco. It is a rich and colorful story of tobacco dealers, growers, and entrepreneurs, which stretches over 150 years.
The tale begins in 1848, a time of revolutions in Europe. Ferdinand Kullmann, a wine merchant from Germany, immigrated to the United States. He anglicized his name to Cullman, continued his work selling wines in America and also, according to family lore, made and sold cigars.
In turn, his son, Joseph, went to work at the age of 14 for a tobacco merchant located at 175 Water Street in New York City, buying and selling leaf tobacco. It was not easy to make money in those days, and to supplement his income he played piano in the evenings, coming to be known as "Piano Joe." Eventually he did well enough to be able to send his son, also called Joseph, to college.
After graduating in 1904, young Joseph Jr. entered the tobacco business. Known as "Mister Junior," he began by buying Havana seed, Connecticut broadleaf, some Cuban tobacco, and tobacco in Wisconsin and Ohio. Like his father, he also imported Sumatra tobacco from the Dutch East Indies and would go to tobacco auctions in Amsterdam for the Indonesian wrapper tobacco.
But Joseph Jr. had his eye on another aspect of the tobacco business. He wanted to grow tobacco in Connecticut, although his father thought he was crazy. Tobacco for cigars was being grown there, but it was Connecticut broadleaf, a dark, maduro-style wrapper. Joseph brought Havana seed, or Cuban seed as it was also known, and tried it in the fertile flat fields of the Connecticut River Valley. The wrapper that came in was lighter, and it had great appeal for consumers. His father was convinced, and the Cullmans became one of the largest growers of wrapper leaf in the state.
Soon another generation of Cullmans was ready to follow the family tradition. In 1944, after returning from Washington where he had been working for the U.S. Treasury, Edgar Cullman decided he wanted to work in his father's tobacco business. His father said he had to learn the business by learning how to roll a cigar and how to grow tobacco.
Edgar joined H. Anton Bock, a little cigar company in New York located on Second Avenue between 65th and 66th Street. For three days a week he would arrive at 6 a.m. In those days people used two-, three- and four-year old tobacco, blending and aging them together. Edgar learned how to sort and shake the Cuban tobacco that came in, how to open up the bales, how to moisten - "case" - the tobacco, and count the leaves. Later he'd sit down at a bench and roll cigars. As he says, he could only roll a few cigars a day and would never have made any money "?but I learned how to roll."
The other two days a week, during the summer growing season, Edgar spent in the tobacco fields or in the tobacco sheds where the leaves hung from the rafters for their initial curing. Or, during the winter months, he was inspecting the warehouses where the tobacco was bulked and processed before being sorted into the various grades.
Meanwhile the family company, which was called Cullman Brothers, grew and prospered selling their sought-after tobacco to cigar-makers. Yet Edgar Cullman wanted to do more. He wanted to put to use the fine tobacco he grew. And he looked around for a cigar company to buy.
His first attempt to buy a company - Bayuk, a filler-maker - failed. However, in 1960 the opportunity arose to buy General Cigar Company, the producer of White Owl, William Penn, Van Dyck and Robert Burns brands of cigars. Cullman put together a group and accomplished the deal. He also became CEO and president of the company. His lack of management experience did not faze him; he loved tobacco and insisted they have better and better tobacco for the filler, binder and wrapper leaves.
In 1968, the company purchased a cigar producing facility in Jamaica, Temple Hall, and its brand Macanudo. Although now the number-one selling premium brand in the United States, at that time only small quantities had been produced for the British market. To broach the U.S. market required much greater numbers of cigars, all made with exacting attention to quality and consistency. The blend would have to be different, too.
After a lengthy internal debate about the blend, General Cigar began making Macanudo in 1971 with a new and unique blend of tobacco grown by the company and soon introduced it to the U. S. Edgar Cullman brought to bear all his 30 years of experience with fine tobacco leaves. He had always wanted Connecticut Shade for the wrapper, and from day one the wrapper was from a specially developed, specially picked and processed seed of tobacco. And the wrapper was aged two to three years. Only aged filler tobacco was used, as well.
Cullman had the help of another expert whose devotion to and love of tobacco was equal to his own: a Cuban from an old tobacco family, Ramón Cifuentes. Cullman credits Cifuentes with teaching him an enormous amount about tobacco and with instilling in General Cigar's workers important tobacco-handling and cigar-making techniques. As Cullman explains it, "There's a feel you have for tobacco, its silken leaves, how to stretch it - you either have it or you don't. You have got to always think of the leaf." Cifuentes "had" the feel.
Today, the Macanudo brand consists of four lines: Macanudo, the classic cigar brand; Macanudo Robust, a fuller-bodied variation introduced in 1998; Macanudo Maduro, introduced in Fall1999; and Macanudo Vintage Cabinet Selection.
As popular as the brand is, the majority of the line is still produced one-by-one, by hand. And Edgar Cullman spends time at every table of rollers a t the facility, where he emphasizes the importance of the rounded crown - a hallmark of Macanudo - comparing it favorably to his own rounded "dome."
As Macanudo started to take off, a new generation joined the business. Edgar M. Cullman, Jr., became an executive trainee at General Cigar in 1974. And like his forebears he, too, learned the cigar business from the ground up, starting in the fields and the cigar factory.
Another event served in the mid-1970's to help propel General Cigar to the pinnacle of the premium cigar business. The Cullmans purchased the rights in the United States for Partagas cigars from the Cifuentes family who had made the legendary brand in Cuba until Castro took over. Ramón Cifuentes helped build Partagas into one of the leading brands today.
With two of the most significant premium imported brands in its portfolio, Macanudo made from the Connecticut shade wrapper and Partagas from the Cameroon wrapper, it was logical for General Cigar to acquire the leading Honduran cigar-maker, Villazon & Company. In 1997 the renowned brands Punch, Hoyo de Monterrey, Hoyo de Monterrey Excalibur, and El Rey del Mundo became members of the family.
In 1997 and 1998 two other brands - brands whose trademarks are owned by General Cigar in the United States - were re-introduced to the American market. Cohiba and Bolivar have joined a loyal following among those seeking a full-bodied cigar experience.
In 1996, under the leadership of Edgar Cullman, Jr., General Cigar Company opened a cigar bar, Club Macanudo in New York City.
Today General Cigar Company is the largest manufacturer and marketer of premium, imported, hand-made or hand-rolled cigars - those made with long filler and all natural tobacco leaf. Through another subsidiary, Culbro Tobacco, it grows, cures, ages and processes the majority of the Connecticut Shade tobacco in the world. It owns 1100 acres of prime Connecticut River Valley land, leases an additional 500 acres in Connecticut and another 80 in the Dominican Republic where it grows filler leaves and, more recently, Candela wrapper leaves. Without doubt it is the largest and most significant, vertically integrated company in the business of making the world's finest cigars.
Yet, it is a big company with deeply held family traditions and values. Just ask any of the members still active in production and management, from Edgar M. Cullman, chairman, to Edgar M. Cullman, Jr., president and chief executive officer, to David Danziger, executive vice president of marketing and sales, and a grandson of Edgar M. Cullman, how deeply they care about their products and how much they love the business.
The answer is there in words and deeds: cigars that demonstrate the family's enduring commitment to quality and to the tobacco leaf itself.
In the words of Edgar Cullman, "I have always been proud about smoking cigars." His great-grandfather would be proud of the 150 years' legacy he left his family. It is a legacy sure to continue for generations to come.
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