Puerto Rico has a new cigar company. Molina & López Tabacalera, founded by Liz Janice López de la Rosa and Pedro Romar Molina, launched on October 14 at Entre Humos in San Patricio, Guaynabo, with two lines: Monte & Mística and Galiz Spirit. The cigars are handmade in Caguas, and the company was incorporated with Puerto Rico’s Department of State on July 9, 2026.
López has been here before. With her late husband and business partner, José Gabriel “El Chan” Cruz Ayala, she built La Hoja del Chan in Caguas, the company behind El Chan Cigars and Galiz. In 2017 the pair rallied around the slogan “Somos la resistencia” as part of a push to revive Puerto Rican tobacco, and in 2024 La Hoja del Chan became the first fully Puerto Rican company to exhibit at the PCA trade show. Cruz Ayala died later that year, and López stepped away for a while. She kept working on blends during that time, and some of those ideas became the new company’s first releases.
Monte & Mística is the new house line, offered in three wrappers. The Maduro uses a San Andrés wrapper over Nicaraguan tobaccos. The Connecticut pairs an Ecuadorian Connecticut wrapper with Indonesian, Nicaraguan and Dominican tobaccos, including ligero. The Corojo is a 5 x 50 robusto with a Corojo wrapper, an Indonesian binder and Nicaraguan filler that includes Piloto Cubano and Ecuadorian ligero. All three are rated medium.
Galiz Spirit brings back the Galiz name from the La Hoja del Chan days, this time as a robusto with a flavored sweet tip. It uses Nicaraguan and Ecuadorian tobaccos and comes in three versions: Brown Sugar, Whisky and Ron Añejo, the last one made with Puerto Rican rum.
“El ron que utilizamos aquí es de aquí, como el coquí,” López said. (The rum we use here is from here, like the coquí.)
López pointed to the mix of imported tobacco and local production as the point of the project. “Blends de Nicaragua, pero con el sabor de aquí, hecho aquí en Puerto Rico. ¿Qué mejor que eso? Mano boricua.” (Blends from Nicaragua, but with the flavor of here, made here in Puerto Rico. What’s better than that? A Puerto Rican hand.)
Entre Humos, founded by Cándido Alfonso, is the exclusive distributor for Puerto Rico and the U.S. The shop says Molina & López is the only factory in Puerto Rico carrying the official Hecho en Puerto Rico seal. At Entre Humos, Monte & Mística sells from $12.35 per cigar, with 20-count boxes of the Corojo at $233. Galiz Spirit starts at $10.85 for Brown Sugar and $12.35 for Whisky and Ron Añejo, and there’s a three-cigar sampler for $27.70.
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