Although the brand’s roots stretch all the way back to late 19th-century Havana, Cuervo Y Sobrinos has enjoyed an impressive renaissance in recent years, with a refreshed collection centered around the idealized midcentury aesthetic of pre-Castro Cuba combined with high-quality Swiss manufacturing. At the heart of this revitalized collection lies the Historiador family, with its distinctive claw-lug design. Cuervo Y Sobrinos has used this basic Historiador layout as a canvas for a broad range of styles in the past few years, but the brand’s latest release has produced arguably the most elegant iteration of the line to date. Inspired by the region of northwest Spain that brand founder Ramón Fernández Cuervo lived in before emigrating to Cuba, the new anthracite dial Cuervo Y Sobrinos Historiador Asturias brings a moody, Moser-esque contemporary minimalist edge to the Historiador line with impressive quality throughout.

Like previous iterations of the three-hand Historiador collection, this new iteration of the Cuervo Y Sobrinos Historiador Asturias begins with a 40mm-wide case in fully polished stainless steel. While the main case body is elementally simple in images, featuring a gently rounded case side profile broken up by subtle flared edges for the bezel and caseback, the lugs offer a vibrant and distinctive look. These lugs are the Historiador line’s signature dish and offer an exaggerated, stylized retro-style broad claw form with a wealth of curves and angles to catch the light in photos. Around back, Cuervo Y Sobrinos fits this new Historiador Asturias with a sapphire display caseback, showcasing its decorated movement while offering a decent 50 meters of water resistance.

The main attraction of the new Cuervo Y Sobrinos Historiador Asturias is its deep, nuanced dégradé dial. Fading from graphite gray to pure black at the dial edge, this dial surface offers an aggressive, sharply grained sunburst effect with dynamic highlights and deep, moody shadows in initial images. Cuervo Y Sobrinos pairs this complex backdrop with a cleanly restrained dial layout, retaining only a few of the brand’s usual Latin flourishes. The slim baton indices and simple polished leaf hands add a bright contrast to the darker dial backdrop, while the ornate applied Cuervo Y Sobrinos coat-of-arms emblem at 12 o’clock retains some of the brand’s more traditional personality. The date window at 6 o’clock will likely prove to be a divisive inclusion given the simplicity of the rest of the dial, but the black date wheel does help this element to blend into the rest of the dial design in images.

Cuervo Y Sobrinos powers this new iteration of the Historiador Asturias with the La Joux-Perret G100-based CYS 5124 automatic movement. La Joux-Perret powerplants have begun to spread across the watch industry at large since their recent acquisition by Citizen Group, and by and large, these Swiss movements have proven to be genuine contenders at their price points. The CYS 5124 is no exception to this, featuring an attractive blend of finishes including radial Côtes de Genève atop the signed rotor, perlage for the bridges and balance cock, and a handful of blued screws. On the performance side, the CYS 5124 also impresses, providing a robust 68 hours of power reserve at a 28,800 bph beat rate. Cuervo Y Sobrinos completes the formula with a classic, minimalist strap in black Cordoban leather.

Coming on the heels of several strong years for the brand, the new anthracite dial Cuervo Y Sobrinos Historiador Asturias takes the brand’s signature collection to a new level of visual refinement with a sharply finished, moody dial design paired to an excellent movement. The new anthracite dial Cuervo Y Sobrinos Historiador Asturias is available now through authorized dealers. MSRP for this Cuervo Y Sobrinos Historiador Asturias stands at 2,100 CHF as of press time. For more details, please visit the brand’s website.