Antonio y Cleopatra is a brand of cigars. They are known to have a delicious taste and are quite popular among cigar smokers both for their taste and for their low price.
Cuba
The brand Antonio y Cleopatra was originally started in Cuba in 1879 and used Cuban tobaccos. Cigars themselves had been around ever since the Mayan empire. Archeologists have found pictures on pots from the Mayan empire showing people smoking tobacco leaves tied up with a string. And the word cigar itself came from the Mayan word sigar.
Because of the Cuban embargo that started back in the 1960s and still remains in effect today, the Antonio y Cleopatra cigar is now made in Puerto Rico. Antonio y Cleopatra is commonly known as AYC.
Anatomy of a Cigar
Cigars today have three parts. The center is the filler. The leaf that goes around the filler is called the binder. The leaves that wrap around the binder are called the wrapper. Different parts of the cigar can come from different countries.
Although the typical filler for an Antonio y Cleopatra cigar is Caribbean Basin Cuban Seed tobacco, the binder tobacco used in Antonio y Cleopatra cigars can come from many different places.
Antonio y Cleopatra cigars have a binder made of homogenized tobacco leaf. Homogenized tobacco leaf is a mixture of chopped scrap tobacco and stems and a cellulose adhesive. So these tobacco scraps can come from various places. The use of homogenized tobacco leaf is one of the things that keeps down the price of this brand of cigar.
Some of the places where Antonio y Cleopatra binder can come from are the Caribbean islands and the Central American countries of Haiti, Mexico, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Puerto Rico. These areas are responsible for producing large quantities of cigar tobacco. The Eastern part of the United States, Italy, Spain, and Indonesia also produce much of the tobacco used in producing cigars.
Configurations
Antonio y Cleopatra cigars are available in different sizes. They come in grenadier size, mini size, and corona size. A corona-sized Antonio y Cleopatra cigar would be about 5 ½ inches long and have a ring size of 43. So they are bigger than cigarettes but not nearly as big as premium cigars.
The filler part of an Antonio y Cleopatra cigar is made up of Caribbean basin Cuban Seed tobacco from Puerto Rico. The wrappers are typically made from Connecticut Shade Natural, Connecticut Broadleaf Maduro, or Java. These wrapper tobaccos come from Indonesia.
Some Antonio y Cleopatra cigars use a green candela wrapper. Candela wrappers are known for having a mild taste.
Blunts
Antonio y Cleopatra cigars are sometimes classified as blunts. This name for cigars came about from the cigar having a blunt end on it. This was to distinguish them from cigars that had a pointed tip. Blunts are the kind of cigars people would buy in gas stations and drugstores, rather than the premium cigars that are bought in a cigar shop. They are much cheaper than premium cigars.
