The brand was founded by José F. Rocha around 1901 or 1902, though the brand was not registered in Havana until 1921, under the ownership of Rocha's firm, J.F. Rocha y Cia. During this time, the Bolívar brand produced the world's smallest cigar called the Delgado. Measuring a mere 1 inches with a 20ring gauge, the Delgado had the honor of having a miniature box of its cigars featured in the royal nursery's dollhouse at Windsor Castle. The company and rights to the brand name were purchased in 1954 by Cifuentes y Cia after Rocha's death and production was moved to the famous Partágas Factory in Havana, where many of its sizes are still produced today. The Cuban Bolívar has a reputation among cigar aficionados of being one of the strongest and most full-bodied cigars, with its Royal Corona, Coronas Junior, Petit Coronas, and Belicosos Finos being famous examples of the marque. In 2002, when Altadis bought a controlling share in the Cuban government-owned cigar distributor, Habanos SA, a number of changes in cigar production were instituted. One of these changes was the decision to gradually turn the various brands of Cuban cigars to either all-handmade or all-machine-made lines. Bolívar, which has historically produced a variety of handmade and machine-made or machine-finished cigars, had several of its vitolas cut from production, with only one remaining, the cigarillo-sized Chicos. It remains to be seen if this size will eventually cease to be produced as well. In 2004, Wolters in Cologne, Germany, had a few thousand boxes of BolívarGold Medals produced by Habanos SA exclusively for their shop. The cigars are an older, discontinued Bolívar size in the Cervantes format, wrapped in gold foil on one half with a special Bolívar band in the middle and come packaged in boxes of ten. Following this release the Gold Medal was reinstated in 2007 as a LCDH cigar but was then discontinued in 2011. The Bolívar brand has also been chosen several times for special sizes in regional releases.
''Vitolas'' in the Bolívar Line
The following list ofvitolas de salida within the Bolívar marque lists their size and ring gauge in Imperial, their vitolas de galera, and their common name in American cigar slang. Hand-Made Vitolas
After tobacco was nationalized following the Cuban Revolution, the Cifuentes family fled Cuba. In 1978, following a 17 year hiatus, Ramón Cifuentes licensed the Partágas and Bolívarbrand names to General Cigar Company, best known as the maker of White Owl, which relaunched a completely new Bolívar branded cigar for the lucrative American market. General Cigar's initial blend for their Bolivar branded cigars used mild Olor filler tobacco from the Dominican Republic, and bore little resemblance to the original Havana Bolívar in either body or flavor. In 2005, the Dominican Bolívar brand was completely reformulated with the addition of a Honduran San Agustin ligero wrapper and Nicaraguan filler tobacco in the blend to more closely approximate the full-bodied strength of the Cuban Bolívar.
