The economic news continues to be, well, less than totally encouraging. But cigar aficionados don't give up easily. And in an ongoing onslaught of depressing headlines, those little pauses-that-refresh become all the more important. Thankfully, help is at hand. It's not always remembered that, in addition to the premium smokes for which they're best known, some of the most prestigious cigar companies make fine discount cigars. These discount premium cigars still offer the kind of excellent construction, firm handling, and, most of all, complex, distinctive taste that cigar aficionados look for.

Coming from Altadis SA, the mild-tasting, smooth-smoking Bering Hallmark brings Dominican long-fillers and Connecticut shade wrappers together with a binder all the way from Indonesia. Despite its reasonable price, this cigar comes from Altadis's Tabacalera de Garcia factory--the Domincan Republic-based cigar factory that also makes Romeo Y Julieta, Montecristo and Trinidad, among other world-class cigars. Acclaimed by cigar aficionados on its debut in July 2008, this cigar offers quality at an affordable price.

Alec Bradley's Spirit of Cuba offers just the transition you need--if you're a mild cigar smoker who's interested in trying something a little heavier. This mild-to-medium blend uses high-quality leaves (it is an Alec Bradley cigar, after all) in a unique twinned design, what cigar fans have called a "Cuban Sandwich": trimmed Central American tobacco leaves wound around a long central leaf, for a slower burn, longer ash, and general endurance. It does indeed offer a bit of the Spirit of a Cuban cigar--without the need to travel, circumvent US law, or risk legal trouble. (The tobacco is grown in other Central American companies that have benefited over the decades from Cuban expertise, both through aid and training from the Cuban government and because many great Cuban cigar-making families have left the island to work in other Latin American nations.)

Speaking of Cuba, Ashton Cigars--one of the handful of successful cigar companies to emerge newly in the past twenty years--offers a cigar called La Aroma de Cuba, but that's not the one to get excited about (at least not if you're looking for excellent budget cigars). Ashton also offers the Savoy and Savoy Maduro, Nicaraguan-made cigars of high quality, at prices so low it might be dangerous to your budget. (Because you'll end up ordering so many.) Nicaragua is widely considered one of the three finest sources of premium tobacco (the others being, of course, Cuba--not available just yet, if you live in the United States--and the Dominican Republic). It's hard to go wrong with a Nicaraguan filler, especially when the cigar containing it comes from a company as reputable as Ashton.

Royal Jamaica Gold cigars come with Nicaraguan wrapper and binder, Jamaican, Honduras and Nicaraguan filler--and an interesting behind-the-cigar story. Tobacco was not historically among the many cash crops grown in Jamaica, and the fact that there is, today, Jamaican filler to use in this Altadis SA cigar line is itself a distant result of international politics. During World War II, the British government decided that it needed an ?in-house? tobacco source, so to speak?this during a period when, despite some setbacks, England still had an Empire to its name, and ?in-house? could mean anywhere in the world. (India didn't even achieve its independence until 1948, for example.) The British ordered that existing deals with Cuba (up till then the major source of UK cigar tobacco) be cancelled, and that tobacco be grown in Jamaica, which was then part of the British Empire, and considered similar enough in climate and atmosphere to provide a good home to some Cuban tobacco seeds. (Winston Churchill's Churchills? Maybe they were Jamaican after all.) Though Jamaica hasn't quite caught up to Cuba as a cigar-producing powerhouse, Royal Jamaica cigars are considered an excellent light-mild smoke.