Hirochi Robaina
Grandson of Alejandro Robaina, who runs the Cuchillas de Barbacoa farm in the Vuelta Abajo and has lent his name to non-Cuban blends.
Hirochi Robaina took over most operations at the family farm at San Luis several years before his grandfather's death in 2010 and has run it since. Cuchillas de Barbacoa remains one of the few Cuban vegas regularly opened to visiting buyers, journalists and tourists, and it functions as much as a public face for Cuban tobacco growing as a commercial farm.
He has also worked outside Cuba, lending his name to cigars made with Nicaraguan tobacco and sold in markets where Cuban product cannot legally be distributed. That arrangement is unusual: Cuban growers rarely appear on non-Cuban packaging, and the crossover has drawn attention as an example of how Cuban agricultural reputation is monetised abroad. Cuban leaf cannot legally be exported for use in non-Cuban blends.
Public documentation of his birth date, formal role and the precise commercial arrangements around his name is limited, and much of what circulates comes from marketing material, so this record is marked reported. For a reference record the useful distinction is between the farm, which is a documented and long-established Cuban vega, and the commercial use of the family name abroad, which is a marketing arrangement of a different kind.