The robusto: short, thick and everywhere

Robusto means robust, and the shape earns it

Robusto is Spanish for strong or robust, and the word describes the cigar's build: stubby and wide. Hold one next to a corona. The corona looks like a pencil. The robusto looks like a thumb.

In Cuban factories the size is called Robustos, and it runs 4 7/8 x 50, or 124 mm by 19.8 mm. Outside Cuba the name is looser, and a box marked robusto can run a little longer or a little fatter. Read the numbers, not the word.

One thing the name doesn't tell you: strength. A robusto can be as gentle as a breakfast smoke or as heavy as anything on the shelf. That comes from the blend.

The size existed before anyone called it a robusto

Short, 50-ring cigars were rolled in Havana for decades before the word showed up on a box. A 2007 Cigar Aficionado column quotes British trade veteran Simon Chase saying the word robusto "did not exist" in public until 1989. The cigars did. Few people outside a small circle of connoisseurs smoked them.

1. 1930s

   Partagás Serie D No. 4, a robusto-sized Havana, makes its public debut, per the same column.

2. 1950s–60s

   Hoyo de Monterrey Epicure No. 2, Bolivar Royal Corona and Ramon Allones Specially Selected appear. Mostly British buyers. Hard to find elsewhere.

3. 1989

   Cuba adds three new sizes to Cohiba, including one sold as the Robusto. The factory slang becomes a shop-counter name.

4. 1992

   Cigar Aficionado launches. The US cigar boom takes off, and a wave of new smokers grows up on the short, fat format.

5. 2020

   A Cigar Aficionado retailer survey finds toros outselling robustos, which had been the top size for about a quarter century.

Chase's own read, as quoted: the name worked in Spanish, English and most European languages, and the cigar caught everyone's imagination. Easy to say. Easy to picture. Easy to sell.

Why did smokers fall for a cigar this stubby?

A robusto gives you a full-ring smoke without asking for a whole evening. That trade is the whole appeal.

• Time. Our estimator puts a 4 7/8 x 50 at about 41 to 56 minutes at a relaxed pace. A lunch break. A walk around the block twice.
• Width. A 50 ring holds more tobacco per inch than a thin cigar, so each inch lasts longer, and the blender gets more filler to work with.
• Fit. Short cigars fit a pocket case, a travel humidor and a small desktop box. Count how many fit yours with the humidor capacity calculator.

The flip side: less length means less time for the flavor to shift. A Churchill has room to change across its thirds. A robusto gets there faster. Some smokers like that. Some want the slow build.

How long does a robusto take to smoke?

Plan on about 49 minutes, our estimate for a 4 7/8 x 50 smoked at a relaxed pace with no rushing. It's a model, not a stopwatch reading: about 10 minutes per inch at a 50 ring, adjusted for width, with 15% either side for the cigar and the smoker.

Puff hard and you'll finish in half an hour. Let it sit in the ashtray between sips and it stretches. Plug your own pace into the smoke time estimator.

Short robusto, long robusto

Makers stretch and squeeze the robusto into a small family of named sizes, and the ring usually stays at 50 or close to it. The petit robusto, Petit Robustos in Cuba, is about 4 x 50. Push past 5 1/2 inches and most lists call it a toro. Thicken it to 52 and some factories use other names entirely, such as the Edmundo at 5 3/8 x 52.

Want to see the robusto beside a corona or a Churchill? The cigar size chart draws any two in proportion.

Robusto questions people ask

Where the robusto history comes from

1. The Robusto Generation (James Suckling, Nov/Dec 2007), Cigar Aficionado
2. 2020 Cigar Aficionado retailer survey: toros overtake robustos, Cigar Aficionado
3. Vitola: Cuban factory sizes including Robustos and Petit Robustos, Wikipedia
4. Cigar: parejo sizes and the meaning of robusto, Wikipedia