El Laguito
The Havana factory created in the mid-1960s to make Cohiba, housed in a requisitioned mansion in the Cubanacan district of western Havana.
El Laguito is not a converted industrial building but a large colonial-style house in the Cubanacan area of western Havana, taken over by the state in the 1960s. The factory was established after a cigar rolled privately by Eduardo Rivera came to Fidel Castro's attention, and Rivera was installed to produce the blend at scale. The result, Cohiba, was made there exclusively for state and diplomatic use before its commercial release in 1982.
The house is small by Cuban standards and its output is correspondingly limited, which is one reason Cohiba has always been supply-constrained. Trinidad, the second state brand, was also created and rolled there. El Laguito was the first Cuban factory to train women as rollers in significant numbers, and the workforce remains predominantly female. Habanos has never published detailed output figures for the house, which has fed persistent speculation about how much Cohiba is actually made.
For collectors the factory matters because the box code system links specific cigars to specific houses, and El Laguito codes have long carried a premium. The building's residential character, with rolling galleries in former reception rooms, makes it the most photographed and least industrial of the Havana factories. Access is tightly controlled and the house is not part of the standard Havana factory tour circuit, which has added to its reputation.