根据美国雪茄协会（Cigar Association of America）发布的数据，2021年有4.56亿支手工雪茄进入美国，这个数字非常漂亮，和2020年相比，进口量增长了25.3%。雪茄零售商表示，雪茄的销售量也创下了美国历史新高。

老弗吉尼亚烟草公司（Old Virginia Tobacco Co.）的加里·佩什（Gary Pesh）自1980年以来一直从事雪茄销售工作，他有七家门店，他说：2021年绝对是非凡的一年，销售额对比2020年实现了两位数的增长。

佛罗里达州奥兰多的皇冠烟草公司（ Corona Cigar Co.）的老板杰夫·鲍里谢维奇（Jeff Borysiewicz）卖雪茄26年了，他也称过去的一年是“他见过最好的一年”。

多米尼加、尼加拉瓜、洪都拉斯这三个主要的雪茄制造国在2021年对美国的雪茄出口量都实现了明显增长，尼加拉瓜出口了2.409亿支雪茄，比2020年增长了29.4%。在美国雪茄进口数量里，尼加拉瓜占到了半壁江山，比例是52.8%。多米尼加的雪茄出口量增长了22.5%，达到了1.295亿支。洪都拉斯出口量是8420万支，增长了18.3%。

2020年美国雪茄进口数量3.613亿支，已经很强劲，比2019年增长了7%。这个增长是在2020年上半年出现新冠病毒疫情而带来的雪茄厂停产的情况下实现的，尤其是多米尼加、洪都拉斯停产时间比较长。2020年年末的雪茄进口量猛增。

相比之下，2021年12月份的雪茄进口数据没有那么多，12月份单月的进口数量同比下降了23.8%。

回购过去，在1990年之前，手工雪茄在美国的销量不高，年进口量在1亿支以内。1977年到1992年，每年雪茄进口量在7300万到1.03亿支之间。1990年代中期，美国雪茄销量呈爆炸式增长，1995年进口1.36亿支，1996年是2.43亿支，1997年达到了4.·18亿支。这三年是让人记忆犹新的强劲三年。

过去十年对于雪茄行业是一个好年代。2021年是美国雪茄进口量连续第十年超过3亿支的年份，也是1997年以来第一次超过4亿支的年份。

附参考文章：

The numbers are in, and they are extraordinary. Last year, 456 million handmade cigars were shipped to the United States, according to the Cigar Association of America. Shipments were up by 25.3 percent over 2020. Cigar retailers said that imports only tell part of the story—cigars are also selling in record numbers. 

“It was an absolutely phenomenal year, double-digit growth from the year previous—and 2020 was pretty good,” says Gary Pesh, who has been selling cigars since 1980. Pesh, of Old Virginia Tobacco Co., owns seven stores. “It really was one of the better years we’ve had.”

Jeff Borysiewicz, owner of Corona Cigar Co. in Orlando, Florida, calls the year “the best I’ve ever seen,” he says. He’s been selling cigars for 26 years.

All three of the major cigar-producing countries posted gains in 2022, all of them significant. Nicaragua, the market leader by far, shipped 240.9 million handmade cigars in 2021, an increase of 29.4 percent over 2020’s numbers. (Nicaragua accounts for more than half of handmade cigar shipments to the United States, 52.8 percent.) The Dominican Republic posted a gain of 22.5 percent, shipping 129.5 million cigars. Honduras had an increase of 18.3 percent, to 84.2 million handmade cigars.

The strong 2021 followed a fairly strong 2020, when 361.3 million handmade cigars were shipped to the United States, a seven-percent increase over 2019 numbers. That growth came despite pandemic shutdowns in cigar factories—particularly in the Dominican Republic and Honduras—in the first half of 2020. The gains were particularly strong in late 2020, with a stunning 71 percent increase in December 2020 when compared to December 2019.

By comparison, December 2021 was not as good. It was almost inevitable to disappoint, given the showing in December the previous year, but December cigar shipments were down 23.8 percent compared to December 2020. 

Looking back, before the 1990s, handmade cigar sales in the United States were small. Imports were at or below 100 million units. Between 1977 and 1992, annual premium cigar imports ranged between 73 million and 103 million cigars, according to the Cigar Association of America. Cigar sales in America exploded in the mid 1990s, climbing to 136 million cigars in 1995, 243 million in 1996 and 418 million in 1997—three years that were the most robust that anyone alive could remember in the world of cigars. 

Cigar shipments cooled after 1997, then climbed back. The past decade has been a good one for cigars, and this was the tenth year in a row that cigar imports exceeded 300 million units, and the first year since 1997 when imports were more than 400 million units.