Tabacalera is the first and oldest cigar factory in Asia, and is among the oldest cigar companies in the world.
The origin of the tobacco industry in the Philippines dates to 1592, when the Spanish Galleon San Clemente brought 50 kilos of Cuban tobacco seeds to the country. The seeds were spread, along with the Catholic faith, by friars, who found that the crop flourished best in the Cagayan Valley in the province of lsabela. With a climate very similar to Cuba's Vuelta Abajo region, lsabela soon hosted a large tobacco-growing industry.
For a century, the tobacco monopoly was the colonial government's major source of revenue, and made the Philippines a financially profitable colony.
