Fábrica de Tabaco Estrela

The Azores had their tobacco industry in the nineteenth century — José Bensaúde opened Fábrica de Tabaco Micaelense in 1866 — and the Estrela is Ponta Delgada's second factory, founded in 1882 by José Medeiros Cogumbreiro, in the parish of São José. It belongs to Empresa Madeirense de Tabacos, EMT, and it does what Atlantic factories do: cigarettes and cigarillos, in volume.

The cigar there is a complement, small and kept apart, and it is what earns the entry: a workshop where women roll entirely by hand, on fillers from Brazil, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, under an American or Indonesian wrapper. The cigar spends two days in a mould, dries at low temperature, then receives its wrapper — Meia Coroa, Coroa, Robusto Estrela, in wooden boxes. This atlas classifies the house in the Azores because that is where the hand works; the tobacco comes from elsewhere, as in the neighbouring Canaries.

In April 2025, EMT and Luciano Cigars, whose entry this atlas carries, founded Constella Group, which becomes Luciano's parent company: an Azorean cigarette factory is now the partner of an Estelí cigar factory. It is through that link, as much as through its workshop, that the Estrela enters here.

Range Depth

• Robusto Estrela

  Wrapper American or Indonesian · Strength Medium

  The house's modern size; two days in the mould before the wrapper.

• Coroa

  Wrapper Undisclosed · Strength Medium

  The corona — the traditional size, with the Meia Coroa, its half.