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Hybrid Wrapper Varietals

Updated 2026-10-28 · by Eric

Habano 2000, Criollo 98, Corojo 99 and their cousins are crossed seed lines, bred in Cuba to survive diseases that were wiping out whole crops... and plenty of the "Habano" and "Corojo" on today's bands descends from them. The seed name tells you the genetics. It doesn't tell you where the leaf grew or how the cigar will taste.

The family stories of the three big Cuban-seed names live on the corojo, criollo, and habano pages. This page covers the numbered crosses that replaced them, and the house hybrids brands now breed for themselves.

Why Cuba started crossing seed

Two diseases forced it. Blue mold is a leaf disease that thrives in cool, wet weather and shows up as blue-gray growth on the underside of the leaf. Black shank goes after the roots and stalk: roots blacken and rot, the stalk pith darkens, and the whole plant wilts at once, worst in wet, poorly drained fields.

Blue mold came back to Cuba in 1979. Eumelio Espino, who ran the island's tobacco breeding program for nearly three decades, has said more than 95 percent of that season's cigar crop was lost. A fungicide saved the next harvest, but a strain that shrugged it off turned up in Cuba in 1994. Resistant seed was the longer answer.

The breeding ran through Cuba's Tobacco Research Institute (Instituto de Investigaciones del Tabaco). By Espino's account it took 14 years: 17 starting varieties, about 42,500 plants, just over 200 lines kept, eight finalists, and a tasting round only two survived... Habana 92 and Habana 2000. By the 1995 harvest nearly every farm in Pinar del Río had switched to the new seed.

Two things worth knowing about the method. It was conventional cross-pollination and selection, the way plant breeders have always worked; Espino has said no genetic engineering was involved. And the "originals" were bred too. Espino describes Corojo itself as a 1948 cross of Criollo and Sumatra-seed tobacco, while other accounts date Corojo to the 1930s on the El Corojo farm. The sources don't agree, and it doesn't change the point: there was never a pure, untouched wrapper seed to protect.

The numbered lines

Cuban documents spell them "Habana"; most non-Cuban bands say "Habano." Same seed. The numbers look like years and loosely are, but they're names, not grades... by the big cigar magazine's account, Habana 2000's development began with a hybrid called Habana 2.1.1 back in the 1980s.

Habana 92. Bred to replace the original Criollo, which mostly worked as filler and binder.
Habana 2000. Bred to take Corojo's place as Cuba's wrapper. The magazine reported it as a cross of Corojo with a mild cigarette tobacco called Bell 61-10, crossed back to Corojo again so Corojo's traits would dominate. The leaf ran thick and needed more fermentation than growers expected, so early non-Cuban cigars wearing it had rough burns until the barn and warehouse handling caught up.
Criollo 98. The institute's patent, filed in 2001, describes a cross of two commercial lines, Habana PR and Habana 92, stabilized over ten generations of self-pollination, resistant to blue mold, black shank, and tobacco mosaic virus, with high yields of wrapper and binder leaf. Two wrinkles: the magazine's 2003 account calls it a Corojo hybrid, which the patent's parent list doesn't show, and Espino later called it a good seed with "some susceptibility to black shank." Read "resistant" as relative.
Corojo 99. Every source agrees it's a later Corojo-family cross; none of the sources behind this page publishes its parents. Espino judged it a good variety whose lingering shortcomings sent the breeders back to work.
The next generation. Corojo 2012 came out of the experiment station at San Juan y Martínez from a four-way cross of Criollo 98, Habana 2000, Corojo 99, and a line called L 17, made in the 2001 to 2002 season. Its paper lists resistance to blue mold, black shank, and mosaic virus, and higher yields than Criollo 98. It's described as a sister line to a Corojo 2006 that Cuban grower Hirochi Robaina has talked about, and the parents of Criollo 2010 are kept secret.

Out of Cuba

The seed didn't stay home. Nestor Plasencia, a Cuban émigré grower working in Honduras and Nicaragua, planted the first Habana 2000 crop in Nicaragua in 1996 and told the magazine his blue mold losses went from entire crops to about 1 percent. The same report noted that Habana 2000 grown in Nicaragua tastes different from Habana 2000 grown in Mexico, identical genetics and all... the terroir argument in one sentence.

The reviews here show how far the lines travel. The La Flor Dominicana Andalusian Bull carries Dominican filler of Criollo '98 with a touch of Pelo de Oro, under a Corojo-seed wrapper grown in Ecuador. It landed a Hand-Me-One (2/4).

The house hybrids

The newer move is the private cross: a brand breeds its own wrapper and puts the word "hybrid" on the box.

Perdomo's Cuban-seed x Cameroon-seed hybrid. Developed by the company's agronomy and genetics teams around 2014 and 2015, and grown under shade on its Finca Natalie farm in Estelí. The Perdomo Legacy Nicaraguan Shade-Grown Epicure wears it; the review calls the leaf by its nickname, "Super Seed." It landed a Box Buy (4/4).
Foundation's Broadleaf x Habano-seed hybrid. Grown in the Connecticut River Valley for the Foundation 10 Year Aniversario Salomon. The magazine calls it "a hybrid between broadleaf and Habano seeds"; other trade coverage calls it Connecticut Broadleaf crossed with Connecticut Havana seed. It landed a Box Buy (4/4).

Set those beside the Tabernacle Havana Seed CT No. 142 from the same company: a Cuban-seed variety grown in Connecticut, sold on its seed name rather than as a new cross. It also landed a Box Buy (4/4). Seed and soil are two separate facts, and a band can name either one.

What a house hybrid tells you: somebody bred that leaf on purpose, and the brand wants credit for it. What it doesn't: the parent lines beyond two seed names, or any breeding record. It's marketing-level genealogy.

What it means at the shop

"Habano" and "Cuban-seed" are directions. Outside Cuba, those words can cover an old seed line, a numbered cross, or something a farm has replanted for decades. Bands almost never say which; the Perdomo 30th Anniversary Maduro Epicure is typical, with retailer listings that call its wrapper Cuban-seed and stop there.
A named line is genetics, not geography. Nicaraguan and Mexican Habana 2000 share a seed and still differ in the leaf. Region, priming, and fermentation move flavor at least as much.
"Hybrid" isn't a downgrade. These crosses exist so there's a crop at all. Habana 2000's early burn trouble was a curing problem, and it got solved in the barn.
Don't buy the flavor story. The programs bred for disease resistance and yield, then screened for taste. No seed name predicts a cigar, and does the wrapper make the flavor covers why even the wrapper's share of the taste can't be pinned to a number.

Keep reading

Sources

Mott, Gordon. "A Passion for Seeds." Cigar Aficionado, July/August 2015. Espino's program (1970 to 1999), the 1979 blue mold losses, Ridomil and the 1994 resistant strain, the 17-variety, 14-year selection, Havana 92 and Havana 2000, Corojo as a Criollo x Sumatra cross in 1948, Criollo '98 and Corojo '99 assessments, Criollo 2010, Corojo 2012 and the Corojo 2006 sister line. cigaraficionado.com
Savona, David. "Hot Hybrids." Cigar Aficionado, May/June 2003. Habana 2000 as Corojo x Bell 61-10 crossed back to Corojo, Habana 2.1.1, the Corojo replacement sequence, early rough burns, Plasencia's 1996 Nicaraguan crop, Nicaraguan vs Mexican Habana 2000. cigaraficionado.com
Instituto de Investigaciones del Tabaco. Patent CU23758A1, "Criollo 98, nueva variedad de tabaco negro," filed 2001-10-16. Parentage Habana PR x Habana 92, ten generations of selfing, resistance to blue mold, black shank (pata prieta), and TMV, high yields of capas and capotes. patents.google.com
García-Morejón, V., Santana-Ferrer, N., and Mena-Padrón, E. (2021). "'Corojo 2012': nueva variedad de tabaco negro." Cultivos Tropicales 42(1): e07. Four-way cross made at the San Juan y Martínez station in 2001 to 2002, disease resistance, yield vs Criollo 98. redalyc.org
Bugwood Wiki. "Major disease pests of tobacco." Blue mold and black shank symptoms and conditions. wiki.bugwood.org
Halfwheel. "PCA 2025: Perdomo." The Legacy Cuban-seed/Cameroon-seed hybrid developed by Perdomo's agronomy and genetics teams. halfwheel.com
Cigar Dojo. "Perdomo Legacy Details Revealed on Smoke Night Live," February 17, 2025. Hybrid developed in 2014 to 2015. cigardojo.com
Cigar Coop. "Perdomo Legacy Gets Launch at PCA 2025," April 23, 2025. Shade-grown on Finca Natalie in Estelí. cigar-coop.com
Mottola, Gregory. "Foundation Celebrates 10 Years With Anniversary Cigar." Cigar Aficionado, March 26, 2025. cigaraficionado.com
Cigar Coop. "Foundation 10-Year Aniversario to Launch at PCA 2025," March 28, 2025. Connecticut Broadleaf/Connecticut Havana seed hybrid. cigar-coop.com
Halfwheel. "The Tabernacle Havana Seed CT No. 142 Corona." Havana Seed CT No. 142 as a variation of Cuban-seed tobacco grown in Connecticut. halfwheel.com