Roll Up for Cuba's Finest - Only £233 a Smoke

What have been billed as the world's most expensive cigars, a limited-edition from the hands of one of Cuba's most famous rollers, have gone on sale at £233 each.

The Cohiba Behike, named after a tribal chief of Cuba's indigenous Taino tribe, was launched last week to mark the 40th anniversary of the Cohiba brand.

Just 4,000 have been rolled, packaged in boxes of 40 and sold at £9,320. The humidors, made of ebony, cedar, sycamore, nacre and ox-bones, are numbered and bear a plaque on which the buyer's name is engraved. Ordinary hand-rolled cigars sell from £1.60 up while "super premiums" can cost £8.

The maker, Habana SA, justified the Cohiba Behike's price by saying each was rolled by Norma Fernandez, one of its most experienced rollers, or torcedoras, at the El Laguito factory in Havana.

"I've been doing this for 39 years but I still love it," she said last week. Seedlings were selected from the Vueltabajo region of Pinar del Río province, home to venerable tobacco growers, and Ms Fernandez decided which blend to use. "But I'm not going to reveal the formula," she said.

The brand was launched in Spain last week by Altadis, a Franco-German importer of Cuban cigars. Apart from the testers at El Laguito, it was not clear if anybody has actually smoked one.

With just 100 boxes available, the Cohiba Behike will be sold through dealers rather than shops.

The irony of a communist-run state exporting a symbol of capitalist luxury has been often noted. Fidel Castro gave up cigars on health grounds in 1985 but that has not inhibited thriving exports from the Caribbean island.