Corona Real

Corona Real is Gabriel Pico Gutiérrez's house in Piedecuesta, the tobacco town of Santander, south of Bucaramanga. He entered it at twelve, tying leaves and delivering tobacco with his father, then working in a small factory at binder and packing; he studied business administration at the Industrial University of Santander — cut short in the seventh semester according to one paper, completed according to the other; the entry writes both — and went to Cuba to learn to make tobacco differently. His brand was first called Cigarros Chicamocha, in 2000, after the neighbouring canyon, and Corona Real in 2006.

Piedecuesta has rolled since its founding, and 95% of Colombian tobacco is made there, he says — but that is tabaco, the popular cigar that feeds thousands of families at a few hundred pesos apiece. Corona Real does something else: puro, all by hand, with about eight people, on tobacco 90% Colombian that comes from Girón, Cepitá, the Mesa de los Santos, Capitanejo, Cúcuta, the Montes de María, and on Ecuadorian Sumatra wrappers of 2005-2006 that he keeps ageing. Three local varieties, Costeña, Guane, Cubita.

He sells throughout Colombia and has not managed to export — the times he tried, restrictions stopped him, he said in 2021; that his cigars reached celebrities is an anecdote he tells and the atlas does not repeat. An entry from the Colombian press, in Spanish, for a house the cigar press has never written.

Range Depth

• Corona Real

  Wrapper Ecuadorian Sumatra or Colombian · Strength Medium

  The house's puro, all by hand, on Santander tobacco and Ecuadorian Sumatra wrapper aged since 2005-2006.