Dutch Masters Cigars

The Dutch Masters Cigar is a brand that has been around since 1911. The marketing and selling of these originated in the United States, and the cigars in this particular brand feature a natural leaf wrapper, lending plenty of natural tobacco flavor to the cigar's profile. Dutch Masters is remembered for the picture of Rembrandt's painting "The Syndics of the Drapers' Guild (De Staalmeesters)" that he did in 1662 on the label. The Dutch Masters brand of cigars are created and sold by Altadis U.S.A, Inc. That company is the American branch of the French/Spanish-based Altadis S.A. in Fort Lauderdale, FL. These flavored cigars are rolled by machine, and the two varieties they come in are full-size cigars and smaller cigars known as "mini-dutches."

The producer of the Dutch Masters cigar was G.H. Johnson Cigar Company. Dutch Masters became the anchor of the Consolidated Cigar Corporation. Later in 1921, through the CCC, G.H. Johnson Cigar Company and six other companies were merged together to be a part of the bigger corporation. Altadis was formed in 1999 through the merging of the Spanish and French tobacco monopolies, and soon Consolidated Cigar Corporation joined with Altadis. You can see through history that Dutch Masters quickly became one of the most popular cigar brands in the United States.

It wasn't until the 1950's and 1960's that Dutch Masters became really well-known and popular. This was due to its sponsorship of the television projects of Ernie Kovacs, a well-known comedian, and avid cigar smoker. Though he always smoked Havana off screen, his publicity of using Dutch Masters radically umped its popularity. Because Dutch Masters let Kovacs have almost complete freedom in the shows and commercials he did with them, he proclaimed his appreciation and the commercials became classics in their field. It wasn't until the 1990's that the Dutch Masters gained a bit of a notoriety. The repetitive usage of "Dutches" being used in hip-hop songs to describe smoking marijuana helped to give it that reputation. Nonetheless, the excellent machine-made cigars remain classic and quality tobacco blends to this day.