Cohiba Behike vs Siglo VI: What You Pay For, Cigar by Cigar

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Put a Cohiba Behike 52 next to a Cohiba Siglo VI and you are looking at two cigars of the same ring gauge, from the same factory in the same Havana suburb, under the same band colour, and one of them costs roughly twice what the other does per stick. On the board this week a box of ten Behike 52 lists at €1,824 in Germany, which is €182 a cigar, and that is the cheapest price in Europe; a box of twenty-five Siglo VI at the same shops is €2,625, which is €105 a cigar. Both are sold out at those shops, which tells you something too. This article is about what sits in that gap, and whether you should pay it. I will give you my own answer at the end, and it is not the one the price suggests.

The two cigars, side by side

	Behike 52	Siglo VI
Line	Behike (2010)	Línea 1492 (line launched 1992; Siglo VI added 2002)
Size	52 ring × 119 mm	52 ring × 150 mm
Box	10, black lacquered	25, slide-lid box
Filler	Cohiba blend plus medio tiempo	Cohiba blend, seco and ligero triple-fermented
Strength	Full	Medium
Cheapest box in Europe this week	€1,824 (DE), sold out	€2,625 (DE), sold out
Per cigar	about €182	about €105

Prices are the cheapest listing the Finder found on 23 September 2026, in the retailer’s own currency with their own tax, before any duty at your border. They move; the live Behike 52 page and the Siglo VI page are the numbers to trust.

What the Behike money buys: a leaf most plants never grow

The Behike story is a leaf. On a sun-grown tobacco plant the leaves are picked in tiers from the bottom up: volado at the base, seco in the middle, ligero at the top, each stronger than the last because the higher leaves take more sun. On some plants, and only some, a final pair of leaves grows above the ligero. Cuban growers call them medio tiempo. They are small, thick, oily and very strong, and for most of the twentieth century they went into the ligero pile or were left on the plant. When Habanos launched the Behike line in 2010, in three sizes, BHK 52, 54 and 56, the pitch was that this leaf, sorted out and given its own place in the blend, was what made the cigar. That scarcity is the price. A plant either grows medio tiempo or it does not, and a cigar that depends on it cannot be made in Siglo quantities.

The rest of the Behike is Cohiba: filler from the Vuelta Abajo’s best farms in San Juan y Martínez and San Luis, seco and ligero given Cohiba’s third fermentation, rolled at El Laguito, the mansion in Cubanacán that has made the brand since the 1960s. The box is a lacquered black case of ten, and it looks like what it costs.

What you get in the mouth is the fullest cigar Cohiba makes. A good Behike 52 is dense and dark from the first third: earth, black coffee, cocoa, a leather note, pepper on the retrohale that builds rather than fades, and a sweetness underneath that keeps the whole thing from being a punishment. It is a cigar that asks for an evening and a full stomach. Young, it can be brutal; the ones I remember had three or four years in the box.

What the Siglo VI money buys: the best-balanced Cohiba

The Línea 1492 was made to mark five hundred years since Columbus, with five sizes named Siglo I to V, one for each century, and it reached the shops in 1994. The Siglo VI came in 2002, a long 52-ring cañonazo, and in my experience it is the one that turned the line from an elegant, slightly polite range into something serious smokers argue about. Where the Behike is built on a rare leaf, the Siglo VI is built on proportion: 150 millimetres of a 52 gauge gives the blender room, and the cigar changes as it goes in a way that shorter vitolas cannot.

It smokes medium. Cream and cedar in the first third, a honeyed sweetness that Cohiba drinkers chase in every vitola and find most reliably here, then coffee and toasted wood as it warms, with a clean, slow burn if the box has been kept properly. It is not a mild cigar; it is a composed one. With a year or two on it a Siglo VI is, for my money, the most complete regular-production cigar Habanos sells.

The Siglo VI comes in boxes of twenty-five, and although it too is sold out at the German shops this week, it exists in the world in quantities the Behike never will. Which brings me to the part of this comparison most guides skip.

The fake problem, which is really a Behike problem

The Behike is the most counterfeited cigar on earth. It is expensive, it is scarce, its buyers are often people who want the name more than the smoke, and its packaging, that glossy black box, is exactly the kind of thing a forger enjoys copying. If somebody offers you Behike 52 at a price that is a third under the board, there is no version of that story where the cigars are real. I have written about reading the box and the date stamp at length; for a Behike, the shortest rule is that the price on the Finder is the floor, and a “deal” below it is a fake.

The Siglo VI is faked too, everything with the Cohiba band is, but the economics are less tempting to a forger and the cigars pass through enough hands, in enough boxes, that a licensed shop’s stock is what it says it is. Buying from a retailer on the board, in a country where Habanos has a distributor, removes most of the risk for both cigars.

Both cigars are 52 ring gauge, so the kit is the same for either: a cutter that clears a 52, such as the Colibri V-Cut or the Colibri Cut, and a windproof torch from our lighters guide.

So which one do I buy?

The Siglo VI, and it is not close. I will explain why in the terms the price invites.

The Behike is a better cigar than the Siglo VI on perhaps one night in three. On the other two, the medio tiempo dominance makes it a heavier, narrower smoke that I admire more than I enjoy, and I have had Behike 52s from the same box that were merely very good and one that was the best cigar of my year. That variance is part of what a rare leaf means. The Siglo VI, by contrast, is the same cigar box after box, and a very good one, and I can put twenty-five in the humidor, forget them for two years, and know what is waiting. At €105 a stick versus €182, the Siglo VI is not a compromise; it is the better purchase, and I would say the same if the prices were equal.

Where the Behike wins is as an event. A wedding, a signed contract, the night a friend flies in from Havana. For that it is worth what it costs, because the occasion is what you are paying for and the cigar will not let you down. Buy a box of ten, keep it at 65%, and give them away slowly over several years to people who will understand what they are being handed. Do not buy them to smoke on a Tuesday.

If you want the Behike character without the Behike bill, look at the Cohiba Robustos, a full-strength 50-ring Línea Clásica cigar that is in stock this week at €76 a cigar in Switzerland. It has the earth and the leather and the strength, without the rare leaf, at less than half the price. And if the Siglo VI is sold out where you are, the Siglo IV, a 46-ring corona gorda at around €60 a cigar and in stock, is the same blend in a slimmer coat and the cigar I would tell a first-time Cohiba buyer to start with.

Questions I get asked

Is the Cohiba Behike worth the price?

As a cigar to smoke regularly, no; the Siglo VI gives you most of the pleasure at about 60% of the price per stick and is far more consistent. As an occasion cigar, yes: at its best the Behike 52 is the finest thing Habanos makes, and the box carries the sense of occasion a wedding or a milestone deserves.

What is medio tiempo tobacco?

Medio tiempo is the pair of small, thick, very strong leaves that grow above the ligero on some sun-grown tobacco plants, and only on some. Habanos reserves it for the Behike line, and its scarcity is the main reason the cigar costs what it does and is made in boxes of ten.

Which is stronger, Behike or Siglo VI?

The Behike 52 is a full-strength cigar; the Siglo VI is medium. If you smoke mostly Montecristo No. 4 or Siglo II, the Siglo VI is the natural step up and the Behike is a leap.

How much does a Cohiba Behike 52 cost in Europe?

On 23 September 2026 the cheapest box of ten on the Finder was €1,824 in Germany, about €182 per cigar, with other listings up to €3,000 a box in Ireland; all the live listings were sold out. A price far below that is a counterfeit, not a bargain.

Behike 52, 54 or 56: which one?

The 52 is the shortest and most concentrated and the one most people mean when they say Behike; the 54 (54 × 144 mm) is the most balanced of the three; the 56 (56 × 166 mm) is a two-hour cigar and the hardest to find. Our board tracks the 52 because it is the one that actually appears on European shelves.

What is the best Cohiba for the money?

The Siglo IV, at roughly €60 a cigar and in stock this week, is the best value in the Línea 1492; the Siglo VI is the best cigar in it. For a full-bodied Cohiba under €80 a stick, the Robustos.