Alejandro Robaina
Cuban wrapper grower whose farm at San Luis gave its name to the Vegas Robaina brand in 1997; the only living person so honoured by Habanos. Died 2010.
Robaina was born on 20 March 1919 at Cuchillas de Barbacoa, the family farm at San Luis in the Vuelta Abajo, where his family had grown tobacco since the nineteenth century. He worked the same ground for most of his life and became the most publicly recognised wrapper grower in Cuba, receiving national honours for the quality of his leaf.
In 1997 Habanos named a brand after him, Vegas Robaina, an unusual step in an industry that names brands for founders, cities and fictional characters rather than farmers, and unprecedented in honouring a living grower. He became the brand's public face, receiving journalists, buyers and photographers at the farm well into his eighties. Few farmers in any agricultural industry become brand names, and no other has done so within the Cuban system.
He handed most day-to-day operation of the farm to his grandson Hirochi some years before his death and died on 17 April 2010 at San Luis. Commentators have long noted that Vegas Robaina cigars cannot be assumed to contain leaf from his farm, since Cuban tobacco is graded and pooled centrally. The farm has nonetheless become a fixed point on the itinerary of visitors to Pinar del Rio.