Montealto
- Founded in
- 1917 ou 1918 — Breña Alta, La Palma
- Factories
- Compañía Insular de Tabaco de La Palma, Las Vueltas, Breña Alta, La Palma
- Countries
- Îles Canaries
Montealto is the top brand of the oldest cigar factory still working in the Canaries. Ernesto González Pérez set it up at Las Vueltas, in the municipality of Breña Alta. The Canary press dates the founding to 1917, the house states 1918; the gap has not been settled. On the island nobody calls it anything but "la Fábrica".
González rolled his cigars during the week, then tied his bundles to the luggage rack of his bicycle and sold them across the island on Saturdays and Sundays. By the 1950s the workshop employed sixty people.
Today it employs about ten. Fabrizio Gentile and Miguel Ángel Pérez González produce there by hand and by machine — some three hundred rolled cigars a day — under the brands Montealto, De Lucía, Premium, Casa Vieja, Rica Hoja and Primorosa. The house grows five thousand plants and makes up the rest with tobacco from Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua.
Beware the near-homonymy, which misleads even business directories: the Compañía Insular de Tabaco de La Palma is not the Compañía Insular Tabacalera that Benjamín Menéndez opened in 1961 at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria to make Montecruz. Two companies, two islands, forty years apart.
Range Depth
Serie Oro
The top line of the Fábrica, hand-rolled. Palmero tobacco from its five thousand plants holds the main place, completed with leaf from Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua.
Toro · Robusto
Serie Plata
The more accessible side of the catalogue, on the same base blend. Some three hundred cigars leave the workshop each day, all brands together.
Toro
Source : eldiario.es « El puro palmero es un producto estrella único y espectacular » (Compañía Insular de Tabaco de La Palma : 1917, Las Vueltas, associés, marques, volumes)