EMS - English Market Selection
April 28 2025 – Joe Berg
You may have noticed a sticker on every box and pack of Cuban cigars sold in our shop, bearing the letters EMS. We're often asked whether our cigars are 'EMS' or what the label means, so we thought it would be useful to provide a guide to EMS - English Market Selection.
The EMS stamp was introduced by Hunters & Frankau (the sole distributor for Cuban cigars in the United Kingdom) over twenty-five years ago as an easily identifiable mark of quality and authenticity for Havanas sold in the UK market.
The stamp is applied to all boxes and packs of Havanas that have passed an additional UK quality inspection before being made available for sale to retailers.
Every single box and pack of Havana cigars are opened (by cutting the seals) and inspected before they leave the Hunters & Frankau warehouse. This is to ensure that only the very best quality cigars are released for sale in the UK market.
The EMS stamp guarantees that:
Every box has come directly from Habanos S.A. in Cuba to Hunters & Frankau
Every box has been shipped and stored by experts
Every box has passed a UK quality check
All UK duties have been paid
Every box carries correct UK health warnings
The EMS stamp is also an important safeguard against counterfeit Havanas that occasionally find their way onto the world market.
The colour of the EMS stamp changes every year, and this signifies the year the box entered the UK and was inspected (not necessarily the year that the cigars were produced in Cuba).
History of the term EMS; The name English Market Selection and its abbreviation to EMS was chosen to mark the guarantee stamps as it is a term that has been referred to in Cuba for over a century. Cigars in the factory would have been marked EMS to identify the quality of cigars designated for the British market. Pre Cuban embargo, the American market preferred specially treated 'green' or light wrappers at the time, whereas the English market favoured darker wrappers than the rest of the world at the time. Therefore AMS for the American market and EMS for the English market was often used to differentiate where specific productions where intended for. The image below is of a salesman's cigar samples, likely from the late 1950's, to demonstrate to customers the difference in colour between AMS and EMS cigars.
