Coronas - part one

Coronas are the most popular size of the world’s cigars and usually, in Cuba at least, refer to a 40 to 42 ring gauge by about 5 to 5 and a half inches in length. Before 1980, when all Cuban vitola sizes produced by different factories were simplified and unified, each Cuban factory had its own interpretation of the size, ‘Corona’. The name ‘Corona’ was already widely used by the Cuban manufacturers around the turn of the 19th century, due, no doubt, to the fact that the La Corona factory was the biggest of its kind in Cuba by the 1880s. Today, the Corona is the standard on which many of the other cigar sizes are based, such as Corones Grandes, Gran Coronas, Double Coronas, Coronas Gordas, Half Coronas, and Petit Coronas. The sizes of non-Cuban coronas vary from one country to another. In the next issue of Cigar Buyer, we shall be looking at Cuban Coronas.