Learn · Origins

The Two Cohibas

Updated 2026-07-17

Two unrelated companies sell cigars called Cohiba. Habanos S.A. sells the Cuban original everywhere on earth except the United States, and General Cigar sells a Dominican-made Cohiba inside it. Neither one is a counterfeit of the other. The same name is simply owned twice, in different markets, by companies with no connection to each other... and that split has kept lawyers employed for nearly thirty years.

The original: Castro's house brand

The Cuban Cohiba was created in 1966, not as a product but as a perk. It began as the private cigar of Fidel Castro's government, rolled at El Laguito, a converted mansion on the outskirts of Havana that had been turned into a rolling school in the early 1960s. For years the brand was never sold at all... Cohibas existed as diplomatic gifts, handed to visiting heads of state. Commercial release is generally given as 1982, when the brand finally went on sale to the public outside Cuba.

Today Cohiba is the flagship of Habanos S.A., the state-linked company that exports every legal Cuban cigar, and it carries the biggest prestige markup in the Cuban catalog. It also cannot be legally bought anywhere in the US (the Cuba page covers the embargo, which still stands in 2026).

The other one: the Red Dot

While the Cuban Cohiba was still a diplomatic gift, General Cigar applied to register the Cohiba name with the US trademark office in 1978 and received the registration in 1981. The embargo kept the Cuban product out of the US market, US law did not recognize Cuba's claim to the name here, and the name was effectively unclaimed on American shelves. General took it.

General's Cohiba is made at the company's factory in the Dominican Republic (the Dominican page covers that origin) from non-Cuban tobaccos, and the blends have changed over the years... the constant is that none of the leaf is Cuban. The nickname Red Dot comes from the band: the "o" in Cohiba carries a red dot, the easiest visual tell separating it from the Cuban band. Since a 2020 packaging redesign, General has leaned into the nickname and printed "Red Dot" on the packaging itself.

The lawsuit that will not die

Cubatabaco, the Cuban trademark holder, first sued to cancel General's US registration in 1997, and the fight has ping-ponged through courts and the trademark office ever since... rulings for Cuba, reversals on embargo grounds, a trip to the Federal Circuit in 2014, a Supreme Court cert denial in 2015. In December 2022 the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board ordered General's Cohiba registrations canceled, citing a 1929 inter-American trademark treaty, and in May 2025 a federal district court upheld that decision. General appealed again, to the Fourth Circuit, in 2025.

As of mid-2026 the dispute does not appear to be finally resolved, and no outcome should be assumed. Two practical notes hold regardless. First, a canceled registration is not the same thing as a ban on selling the cigar, so the litigation has not pulled Red Dots off shelves... they have stayed on sale throughout. Second, the embargo means a court win for Cuba would still not put Cuban Cohibas in US humidors. Treat any confident claim about "who won" with suspicion until the appeals actually end.

The same split, all over the shelf

Cohiba is the loudest example of a pattern, not an exception. When Cuba nationalized its cigar industry in the early 1960s, the founding families fled and the trademarks split. Montecristo, Romeo y Julieta, Partagás, H. Upmann, Hoyo de Monterrey, Punch... each name exists twice, as a Cuban brand sold everywhere but the US and a separate non-Cuban brand (mostly Dominican, Honduran, or Nicaraguan) sold legally in the US by companies unrelated to Habanos S.A. Same name, different tobacco, different owner, different market.

What this means at the register

A Cohiba sold legally in a US shop is always the Dominican one. There is no legal US source for Cuban cigars, none (the Cuba page has the details). No exceptions for "special import" stories.
A "Cuban Cohiba" offered cheap is a fake. Real ones are expensive everywhere on earth, and the brand is the most counterfeited name in cigars (fake Cuban cigars has the tells). The risk runs highest in tourist markets (buying cigars on vacation covers that trap).
Neither cigar is pretending to be the other. The Red Dot is a legal Dominican cigar that should be judged as a Dominican cigar, against Dominican-cigar prices (how to buy cigars covers judging any cigar at its street price). The Cuban is a Cuban. They taste like what they are... different tobaccos from different countries that happen to share a band name.