The Perez-Carrillo family's roots in tobacco stretch back to 1904 in Havana, Cuba, where Ernesto Sr. learned the craft from his own father — a man who rolled and sold penny cigars in the streets. After purchasing El Credito, a small cigar factory in Havana in 1948, the family built a respected name in Cuban tobacco — until the Cuban Revolution forced them to flee to Miami, leaving behind their factory, their properties, and everything they had built. Ernesto Sr. eventually reestablished El Credito in Little Havana, and his son Ernesto Jr. — who had detoured through New York chasing a career as a jazz drummer — returned to Miami and ultimately took over the factory in 1980. The breakthrough came in 1992, when four of Ernesto's La Gloria Cubana cigars scored 90 or higher in the debut issues of Cigar Aficionado, stunning the industry and outperforming established brands and even Cuban competitors overnight.
After selling El Credito to Swedish Match in 1999 and spending a decade with General Cigar, Ernesto returned to the craft in 2009 at the urging of his children — launching Casa Carrillo as a family-run boutique brand alongside his son Ernesto III and daughter Lissette. He established Tabacalera La Alianza, a 40,000 square foot factory in Santiago, Dominican Republic, where tobacco is fermented, aged, and hand-rolled the Cuban way — finished with the traditional triple-cap method that has defined the Perez-Carrillo standard for generations. Today, Casa Carrillo's portfolio spans the wrapper-forward Essence Series and the flagship Perez-Carrillo Series — including the Pledge Prequel, named Cigar Aficionado's 2020 Cigar of the Year — each one a product of the same principles Ernesto learned as a child in the tobacco fields of Cuba's Vuelta Abajo: patience, humility, and an obsession with getting the blend exactly right.
