WARNING: Cigar smoking can cause cancers of the mouth and throat, even if you do not inhale.
Backwoods is a machine-made cigar brand introduced by Consolidated Cigar in 1973 and owned today by ITG Cigars, the cigar arm of ITG Brands, the US subsidiary of Imperial Brands. It is built differently from most cigarillos: an all-tobacco cigar with a natural broadleaf wrapper, no homogenized components, no tip and no filter, sold loose-looking and rough-ended in five-count pouches. ITG calls it the No. 1 natural leaf cigar in the US; in convenience-store scanner data it holds about 5% of cigar units, sixth among brands. Variants are sold under flavor names printed on the pouch. This guide lists them, then covers the ownership chain from Consolidated Cigar to Imperial and the rules that apply to flavored cigars.
Last verified September 11, 2026 against ITG Brands’ brand pages, Imperial and Altadis corporate history, FDA documents and retailer listings for variant names and pack counts, since backwoodscigars.com does not publish a readable product list. Flavor names are product identifiers only. Sources at the end.
The brand
| Fact | Backwoods |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer of record | ITG Cigars Inc., Greensboro, North Carolina (retailer listings still name Altadis U.S.A., the former corporate name) |
| Parent | Imperial Brands PLC (UK), through ITG Brands |
| Launched | 1973, by Consolidated Cigar Corporation (one retailer’s history says national distribution in 1981) |
| Ownership path | Consolidated Cigar (Gulf+Western 1968; Ronald Perelman’s MacAndrews & Forbes 1984 to 1999); SEITA of France 1999; Altadis 2000; Imperial Tobacco February 2008; ITG Brands since 2015 |
| Made in | Puerto Rico, at the former Consolidated Cigar machine-made plant, per retailer packaging; ITG Cigars also runs a plant in McAdoo, Pennsylvania. Which site makes Backwoods today is not confirmed by a primary source |
| Product type | Machine-made large cigar; natural broadleaf wrapper, all-tobacco, no homogenized components, no tip, no filter |
| Market position | “The #1 natural leaf cigar in the U.S.” (ITG Brands); 4.8% of convenience-store cigar units in 2025, behind Black & Mild, Swisher Sweets, Garcia y Vega, Dutch Masters and White Owl (Nielsen data, Rutgers analysis) |
| Menthol, tips, filters | None |
| Federal tax class | Large cigar: 52.75% of price up to 40.26 cents each |
The lineup
Variant names and pack counts are from retailer listings, checked September 2026; ITG does not publish a list and does not date its limited editions, so which variants are permanent is not confirmed. The standard pack is a five-count pouch, eight pouches to a box of 40; several variants also come in 24-count boxes of singles.
| Variant as listed | Packs | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Backwoods Original | 5-count pouch, 8 per box | The 1973 product; “Wild & Mild” is the pouch tagline |
| Backwoods Sweet Aromatic | 5-count pouch; 24-count singles | |
| Backwoods Honey | 5-count pouch | |
| Backwoods Honey Berry | 5-count pouch; 24-count singles | |
| Backwoods Honey Bourbon | 5-count pouch; 24-count singles | A tobacco product; contains no alcohol |
| Backwoods Russian Cream | 5-count pouch; 3-count pouch; 24-count singles | |
| Backwoods Black Russian | 5-count pouch | |
| Backwoods Dark Stout | 5-count pouch; 24-count box | |
| Backwoods Banana | 5-count pouch | |
| Backwoods Bananas Foster | 5-count pouch | Listed by some retailers as “Nola Bananas Foster” |
| Backwoods Chocolate | 5-count pouch | |
| Backwoods Dark Berry | 5-count pouch | |
| Backwoods Vanilla | 5-count pouch | |
| Backwoods Smoked Caramel | 5-count pouch | |
| Backwoods Cognac XO | 5-count pouch | A tobacco product; contains no alcohol |
| Backwoods Wild Rum | 5-count pouch | A tobacco product; contains no alcohol |
| Backwoods Rum Cake | 5-count pouch | |
| Backwoods Sweet TICAL | 5-count pouch | |
| Backwoods White | 5-count pouch | |
| Backwoods Smooth | 5-count pouch | |
| Backwoods Bold | 5-count pouch |
Backwoods Grape, listed on older versions of this page, no longer appears at the retailers checked. ITG also sells TrueWraps by Backwoods, natural tobacco leaf wraps, which are a separate product and not a cigar. “Backwoods Pipe Tobacco” appears at some retailers; whether it is an ITG product is not confirmed.
History
Consolidated Cigar Corporation was formed in 1921 when the maker of Dutch Masters merged with six other cigar companies, and was bought by Gulf+Western in 1968. It introduced Backwoods in 1973, three years after the broadcast advertising ban on cigarettes took effect. The company changed hands repeatedly: Ronald Perelman’s MacAndrews & Forbes bought it for $118 million in 1984, sold it to management in 1988, bought it back in 1993 and took it public in 1996; the French tobacco monopoly SEITA paid $733 million for it in 1999, merged with Spain’s Tabacalera to form Altadis, and combined Consolidated with Havatampa in August 2000 as Altadis U.S.A., the name still printed on some Backwoods packaging. Imperial Tobacco bought Altadis for 16.2 billion euros in February 2008. When Imperial formed ITG Brands in June 2015 to hold the Winston, Kool, Salem and Maverick cigarette brands it bought from Reynolds, the Altadis cigar business joined it as ITG Cigars. The “natural” segment Backwoods anchors grew from 22.3% to 33.9% of convenience-store cigar dollars between 2017 and 2021, though Backwoods’ own unit share edged down from 5.2% in 2021 to 4.8% in 2025.
Regulation
Cigars came under FDA authority on August 8, 2016 through the deeming rule, and every cigar on the market that day needed a substantial-equivalence report or premarket application filed by September 9, 2020. No marketing order for a Backwoods product appears on the FDA’s published lists; like most machine-made cigars it remains on sale while its filings are pending. The premium-cigar exemption from the deeming rule, in place since August 2023 and defined in April 2026, requires hand-rolling, no characterizing flavor and a weight over 6 pounds per thousand; Backwoods, machine-made and mostly flavored, does not qualify despite its natural-leaf wrapper. The FDA’s proposed federal ban on characterizing flavors in cigars (May 4, 2022) was withdrawn on January 21, 2025.
The cigar warning rule was vacated on September 11, 2020, so cigar warnings are voluntary. Massachusetts banned flavored cigar sales outside licensed smoking bars from June 1, 2020. California banned flavored cigars from December 21, 2022, with an exemption only for hand-made premium cigars at a wholesale price of $12 or more, and since January 1, 2025 a cigar may be sold there only if it is on the state’s Unflavored Tobacco List; Backwoods’ entries on that list were not checked for this page. Federal excise on large cigars has been 52.75% of price, capped at 40.26 cents each, since April 2009. The federal minimum age is 21. Texas, where Saucey delivers tobacco, has no flavored-cigar restriction.
FAQs
Who makes Backwoods? ITG Cigars, part of ITG Brands and Imperial Brands. The Altadis U.S.A. name on some packs is the previous corporate name of the same business.
Why do Backwoods look different from other cigarillos? They are made with a whole natural broadleaf wrapper and no homogenized (reconstituted) tobacco sheet, and the ends are left rough. It is a construction difference; it carries no health meaning.
Are Backwoods premium cigars? Not under the FDA’s 2026 definition, which requires hand-rolling and no characterizing flavor, or California’s, which requires hand-making and a $12 wholesale price. They are machine-made large cigars.
Why are Backwoods more expensive than other cigarillos? The natural leaf wrapper costs more to produce than homogenized sheet, and ITG positions the brand above the mass cigarillo tier. What a pouch actually costs is set by state cigar taxes and the retailer.
Are some Backwoods discontinued? ITG does not publish discontinuations. Grape is gone from the retailers checked, and flavored variants cannot be sold in Massachusetts or California or in cities with local flavor bans.
How do Backwoods compare with Swisher Sweets? Swisher’s answer to the natural-leaf segment is its Leaf line; the rest of Swisher Sweets uses homogenized wrappers. The full line is in the Swisher Sweets guide; the other large machine-made brand is in the Black & Mild guide.
Sources
- ITG Brands, Our Brands; backwoodscigars.com; Cigar Aficionado, A timeline of how Imperial Brands came to be; JR Cigars, An introduction to Backwoods cigars; Greater Hazleton Chamber of Commerce, ITG Cigars, Inc.
- Ganz et al., Rutgers, cigar brand sales in US convenience stores, 2021 to 2025 (Nielsen data), preprint April 2026; “natural” cigar sales, 2017 to 2021 (Nielsen data, PMC)
- FDA, Cigars, cigarillos, little filtered cigars, SE marketing orders and cigar labeling and warning statement requirements; Public Health Law Center, flavored cigar standard tracker
- TTB, federal excise tax increase (CHIPRA); Mass.gov, 2019 Tobacco Control Law; Public Health Law Center, California flavored tobacco law; California Attorney General, Unflavored Tobacco List, December 31, 2025
- Retailer listings (Tobacco Stock, Tobacco General, Buitrago Cigars) for variant names and pack counts, checked September 11, 2026
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The fine print
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