Tabacalera

Tabacalera traces to November 11, 1881, when Antonio López y López, the first Marqués de Comillas, formed the Compañía General de Tabacos de Filipinas as Spain's colonial tobacco monopoly in the Philippines was being dismantled (the monopoly itself had been abolished that June). The trade the company entered was older still: Spanish galleons are recorded as having brought Cuban tobacco seed to the islands in 1592, and Cagayan Valley tobacco, grown in conditions likened to Cuba's Vuelta Abajo, became a colonial export staple. In 1887 the company built La Flor de la Isabela, described at the time as the largest and most sophisticated cigar factory in the world, and by the close of the 19th century Manila-made cigars were competing internationally with Havana's.

The business contracted through the 20th century as cigarette smoking displaced cigars and its facilities were damaged during the Second World War. After roughly a century under the founding company's ownership, a Filipino group acquired the tobacco operation in the late 1980s, brought in Cuban master cigar maker Alfredo Salinas to advise on production, and the brand was renamed Tabacalera Incorporada. It now runs a factory in Dasmariñas, Cavite, producing cigars described on its own site as "totalmente hecho a mano," completely handmade, under lines including Flor Fina, 1881, 1881 Perique, Don Juan Urquijo and Alhambra, using leaf grown in Isabela province alongside imported tobacco.

Tabacalera maintains a retail showroom and cigar lounge on the fourth floor of The City Club at Alphaland Makati Place in Makati City, open weekdays 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturdays 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., alongside online sales of cigars, humidors and accessories. Trade coverage refers to it as the oldest cigar factory in Asia, consistent with its unbroken line back to the 1881 founding.