FROM CUBA TO NICARAGUA, FROM THE FIELD TO THE CLUB: WHY OLIVA’S STORY BELONGS AT THE AIRWAYS CLUB
This December, The Airways Club opens a new membership acceptance period. And there may be no better cigar story with which to begin than one that has survived war, migration, changing countries and more than a century of tobacco history.
The history that Oliva Cigars itself tells begins in Pinar del Río, Cuba, in 1886, when Melanio Oliva cultivated his first tobacco crop. His work was interrupted when he left the fields to fight in Cuba's War of Independence. When the conflict ended, he returned to tobacco.
More than a century later, his name would appear on one of the most celebrated Nicaraguan cigars of the modern era.
That journey—from Cuba to Nicaragua, from farmer to family enterprise, from tobacco field to internationally recognized cigar—is exactly the kind of story we appreciate at The Airways Club.
And this December, as we open a new membership acceptance period, it is also a reminder of what cigar culture can represent when it is given the right room.
Not simply smoke.
History. Conversation. Ritual. Time.
BEFORE OLIVA WAS A BRAND, IT WAS A FAMILY WORKING THE LAND
Luxury brands often begin their histories with the finished product.
Oliva's story begins much earlier.
It begins with soil.
According to the company's official history, Melanio's son Facundo Oliva assumed the family's growing operations in the early 1920s and cultivated the family tobacco fields for decades. Political transformation in Cuba eventually altered that world, and Facundo's son, Gilberto Oliva, moved from growing tobacco into brokering it. Oliva Cigar
Then came the search for somewhere new.
Gilberto traveled through Honduras, Panama, Mexico and even the Philippines, looking for conditions capable of producing the character the family associated with Cuban tobacco.
Eventually, he found fertile ground in Nicaragua. Oliva Cigar
That distinction matters.
The Oliva story is not simply the story of a Cuban cigar becoming a Nicaraguan cigar. It is a story familiar throughout the cigar world: people carrying knowledge with them when geography changes.
The country changed.
The knowledge survived.
CUBA PROVIDED THE ROOTS. NICARAGUA PROVIDED THE NEXT CHAPTER.
Nicaragua didn't merely become an alternative location for the Oliva family.
It became fundamental to what Oliva would eventually become.
The company's modern portfolio demonstrates how deeply Nicaraguan agriculture is embedded in the brand. The Oliva Serie O, for example, uses Habano tobacco cultivated across Estelí, Condega and the Jalapa Valley, while Serie V uses Nicaraguan long fillers and specially fermented ligero from Jalapa. Oliva Cigar
For cigar smokers, those names aren't simply points on a map.
They are part of the vocabulary of modern Nicaraguan tobacco.
And that is one of the pleasures of becoming more serious about cigars: eventually, you stop seeing only the band.
You begin asking about the wrapper.
The filler.
The seed.
The farm.
The region.
The fermentation.
The hands that rolled it.
And finally, the history that put all those things together.
You stop merely smoking the cigar. You begin reading it.
1995: THE FAMILY MOVES FROM TOBACCO TO THE FINISHED CIGAR
For generations, tobacco itself had been the family's expertise.
The next transformation came in 1995.
According to Cigar Aficionado's history of Oliva, Gilberto Oliva Sr. and his son Gilberto Jr. produced a cigar inside the Plasencia factory called Gilberto Oliva. The following year they moved toward establishing their own operation and shortened the brand name to the one cigar smokers recognize today: Oliva. Cigar Aficionado
That transition is important because Oliva did not approach cigars as outsiders trying to manufacture a luxury brand.
They came from tobacco.
They understood the raw material before the finished product.
And eventually that agricultural knowledge would help produce the cigar that dramatically elevated the company's international reputation.
THEN CAME SERIE V.
The Oliva Serie V debuted in 2006 and became a major turning point for the company. Cigar Aficionado later described the line as the cigar that brought Oliva to the attention of connoisseurs. Oliva Cigar
The composition helps explain its identity.
Oliva describes Serie V as a blend of Nicaraguan long-filler tobaccos with specially fermented Jalapa Valley ligero, finished with an Ecuadorian wrapper. Oliva Cigar
But ratings alone aren't what make Serie V interesting to us.
It represents the moment when generations of agricultural knowledge became something cigar smokers around the world could hold between their fingers.
And then Oliva went one step further.
SERIE V MELANIO: PUTTING THE FIRST FARMER'S NAME BACK ON THE CIGAR
In 2012, Oliva introduced Serie V Melanio.
The name wasn't created by a marketing department.
It reached backward more than a century to Melanio Oliva, the family member whose tobacco story began in Cuba in 1886. Oliva Cigar
That makes the cigar unusually appropriate for a club built around conversation.
Imagine lighting one without knowing the story.
It's a cigar.
Now imagine lighting the same cigar knowing that its name reaches back to a Cuban tobacco farmer in the nineteenth century; that the family subsequently passed the trade from one generation to another; that political upheaval displaced the family's operations; and that Gilberto searched multiple countries before Nicaragua became the family's new agricultural home.
The cigar hasn't physically changed.
Your experience of it has.
That's what knowledge does to taste.
AND THEN, 96 POINTS.
In 2014, the Oliva Serie V Melanio Figurado was named Cigar Aficionado's No. 1 Cigar of the Year with a score of 96 points. Cigar Aficionado
Oliva's own product page continues to identify the Figurado as the 2014 Cigar of the Year, describing the Melanio as a blend using fermented ligero fillers and aged Jalapa tobacco, with Nicaraguan binder and filler beneath an Ecuadorian wrapper. Oliva Cigar
It was an extraordinary conclusion to a story that had started in a field 128 years earlier.
But perhaps “conclusion” is the wrong word.
Because cigar culture doesn't really work that way.
The next chapter happens every time somebody lights one.
THIS IS WHY A PRIVATE CIGAR CLUB STILL MATTERS.
You can buy an excellent cigar almost anywhere.
You can order accessories online.
You can read ratings on your phone.
You can watch somebody else's review on YouTube.
What you cannot order in a box is context.
The person sitting beside you who has smoked that cigar for twenty years.
The member who remembers a different vintage.
The conversation about why Nicaraguan tobacco changed the premium cigar industry.
The businessman who knows nothing about Oliva when he sits down—and an hour later understands why Melanio's name appears on the band.
That is where a cigar club becomes something different from a cigar store.
The Airways Club isn't simply about having somewhere to smoke.
It is about having somewhere to understand what you're smoking—and having people around you worth discussing it with.
THIS DECEMBER, WE OPEN THE DOOR AGAIN.
This December, The Airways Club will open a new membership acceptance period.
And we are deliberately using the word acceptance.
Because a private club should not simply be another subscription.
It should have character.
It should develop traditions.
It should have familiar chairs, familiar faces and conversations that continue from one week to the next.
It should be somewhere a man can arrive with his laptop and coffee, conduct business when necessary, close the computer when the work is finished, pour something worth drinking and light something worth taking time over.
At the crossroads of Coral Gables and Coconut Grove, that is the culture we're building.
Not another crowded café.
Not another networking event where everyone is trying to leave with somebody else's business card.
Not another place designed primarily to be photographed.
A private club designed to be used.
MAYBE YOUR FIRST CONVERSATION SHOULD BEGIN WITH AN OLIVA.
The beauty of the Oliva story is that it gives a table something to discuss before anyone has even introduced himself.
Cuba.
Nicaragua.
Migration.
Agriculture.
Family businesses.
Political history.
Craftsmanship.
Brand building.
Generational knowledge.
And, eventually, the cigar itself.
That's considerably more interesting than asking someone:
“So, what do you do?”
At The Airways Club, we believe great cigars can become the beginning of better conversations.
And sometimes better conversations become relationships.
Sometimes relationships become opportunities.
And sometimes nothing happens at all.
Two men simply smoke an excellent cigar for an hour.
That's valuable too.
FROM 1886 TO DECEMBER 2026
Melanio Oliva couldn't have known where the tobacco he began cultivating in Pinar del Río would ultimately lead his family.
Facundo couldn't have known.
Gilberto couldn't have known while searching Honduras, Panama, Mexico, the Philippines and eventually Nicaragua.
That's part of what makes the history compelling.
Oliva's story is ultimately about continuity through change.
The geography changed. The craft remained.
And perhaps that's an appropriate thought as The Airways Club prepares to welcome its next group of members.
Miami changes constantly.
Restaurants open.
Neighborhoods become fashionable.
Buildings rise.
Businesses move.
People arrive.
People leave.
But some things remain remarkably durable:
A private room.
A good chair.
A properly made cigar.
A drink poured without hurry.
And a conversation that doesn't need to be posted anywhere.
THIS DECEMBER, THE NEXT CHAIR COULD BE YOURS.
THE AIRWAYS CLUB
CIGARS. CONVERSATION. CONFIDENTIALITY.
At the crossroads of Coral Gables × Coconut Grove.
New membership acceptance opens December 2026.
For adults 21+. Cigar smoking carries serious health risks.
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