Our History
Every legacy begins with a dream, and every dream, if it’s worth telling, survives something that tries to end it. Ours survived exile.
The Patriarch
Before there was a single leaf rolled, there was Jose Rafael Martinez. In Santiago de Cuba, Jose built a future and turned a dream into a reality — not one shoe store, but three, each one a rung in a legacy he intended to hand down for generations. He was, in every sense of the word, a patriarch: discerning in his craft, sophisticated in his ambition, and utterly devoted to the idea that what he built would outlast him. It should have. Circumstances would not let that happen the way he planned.
Communism does not ask permission before it takes everything. In 1969, Jose Rafael Martinez left Cuba with the same resolve he’d built his stores on, but none of what he’d built was left to carry on the dream. He spent the remainder of his life in exile, a world away from Santiago de Cuba, from the storefronts that bore his family’s name, from the legacy he’d sworn to leave behind.
A lesser dream would have ended there. Ours didn’t.
Three Generations, One Legacy
Jose’s son, Alexander, grew up in the shadow of a dream interrupted. He understood, better than most, what it meant to lose everything before it had the chance to be inherited. When his own son, Alexander Jose, known to the family as A.J., came of age, the two of them decided: the dream Jose Rafael Martinez carried out of Cuba would not stay buried with him.
The industry changed. Shoes became cigars. But this was Cuba, where cigars were not just a rite of passage but woven into the fabric of life, and the purpose behind the work was just as resilient. Alexander and A.J. founded Exile Cigars not as a departure from Jose’s dream, but as its continuation, draped in a different craft but built on the same foundation: a product worthy of building a legacy upon.
That is why our motto is not a slogan we chose for its ring. It’s a promise, inherited: building a legacy, one cigar at a time.
A Name for Every Store, A Store for Every Name
We named our core line the way Jose once named his stores, and for the same reason: to make sure something survives.
La Dalia bears the name of the very first store Jose ever opened, the beginning of everything, and so it carries a little more weight than the rest. It is, in the most literal sense we know how to make it, a tribute you can hold in your hand and light. Versalles carries the name of the second store: sophisticated and sassy, much like the store it honors. Alaska pays homage to the third and final shoe store Jose opened in Santiago de Cuba, a complex, layered cigar to match a complex, layered chapter of the family’s story.
Rolled With the Same Intention
Today, every Exile cigar is rolled at the La Union Factory in the Dominican Republic. The geography has changed since Jose’s Cuba. The intention has not. We are proud to bring you our cigars, born out of love, for your enjoyment.
Exile Cigars is not a brand that chases trends. It’s a family, three generations deep, continuing to build on the legacy that circumstance once tried to take from us. When you light an Exile cigar, you are, in a small but real way, part of that continuation.
Continue the Legacy With Us
The story doesn’t end with us; it continues with everyone who picks up an Exile cigar and understands what’s behind it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Exile Cigars was founded by Alexander Martinez and his son, Alexander Jose (A.J.), in honor of Alexander’s father, Jose Rafael Martinez. Jose built a legacy in the shoe industry across Santiago de Cuba before communism forced him to leave in 1969, spending the rest of his life in exile. The name honors that history directly.
Each is named after one of the three shoe stores Jose Rafael Martinez opened in Santiago de Cuba. La Dalia honors the first store and the origin of the family’s dream, Versalles the second, and Alaska the third.
Yes. Exile Cigars remains a family-owned company, carried forward by the Martinez family across three generations, from patriarch to son to grandson.
Every blend is named and developed with the family’s history in mind, not as a marketing detail, but as the actual reason the company exists. The commitment to quality traces directly back to Jose Rafael Martinez’s original standard: build something worthy of a legacy.
Explore Our Blends to see how the family’s history shapes each blend, or get in touch through our Contact page.