Nicaragua: Culture, Charm and Cigars

by Jeff Slatton

 

I figured if I wanted to learn more about how the making of a cigar can make a difference in the one I’m smoking, then I should take a tour of a factory, see some tobacco fields and meet people in the industry. So, my wife, Brenda, and I did. We spent eight days in Nicaragua, the “safest Latin American country,” touring three factories, experiencing the culture and the people, learning about tobacco and blending and smoking cigars with the help of David Blanco of Blanco Cigars.

We landed in the Managua airport and headed to the airport pool for drinks and cigars. Once the rest of our 10-person tour party arrived, we jumped into the van and headed out for Granada. We got there rather quickly, it being a fairly short drive and David being a fairly fast driver. We checked into our hotel, the Guardabarranca. After settling in our rooms, we walked to dinner. We sat downtown in Calle de Calzada, outside of the Nectar restaurant, smoked cigars and drank rum while waiting for our food. We were drinking Nicaragua’s own Flor de Caña 7-year-old rum, which gets you relaxed, so you can sit and smoke cigars and drink more rum while you smoke more cigars.

The next morning David parked the van in front of a great yellow mansion that had been restored and converted to a cigar factory; Mombacho’s Casa Favilli, one of the destinations on my personal hit list.

Master blender Claudio Sgroi conducted our tour of the factory– an entertaining and informational tour led by a most interesting man. We followed him from room to room, watching the process of creating boutique premium cigars unfold: from fermentation to sorting, then on to rolling the bunch and pressing it, then on to the wrapper being applied.

To make their perfect parejo cigars uses multiple steps and many hands. To ensure the end product is a smooth draw with an excellent taste is a noble goal but the Nicaraguans strive for perfection in presentation as well. Sgroi showed us the way Mombacho perfects their cigar presentation with skilled rollers using the accordion folding technique on the filler then wrapping it in the binder leaf and pressing the unfinished cigar. They then test the cigars for optimal draw before the tabaqueros (rollers) apply the wrapper; sorting by color, followed by aging the product an additional three months.

Watching a cigar being rolled is pure joy. The skill with the chaveta (a flat, rounded blade used to trim the leaves) and the perfect amount of gomma (pectin) to hold the wrapper in place. The quick but perfect cutting of the leaf, the perfectly smooth wrapper with the right amount of pressure to ensure a great smoke. This factory even adds a stamp with the creation date on the back of each cigar band for aging fans.

After dinner we got back in the van for the drive to Esteli. We opened the windows, smoked cigars and drank rum and some beer. Nicaragua has two kinds of beer; Victoria and Toña–surprisingly tasty brands. Finally, we came to Esteli, the home of some of the finest cigar makers in the world and checked in to Hotel los Altos. And of course, some of the die-hards sat on the patio and smoked cigars and drank rum late into the night.

David wanted to give us a more complete Nicaraguan experience, so besides the tobacco tours, he took us to not only the best restaurants, but also to the historical cathedrals and the open-air market section of town, where fresh fruits and vegetables were for sale. While we were there we sampled freshly made tortillas with black beans and local cheese. Another night, we went to the Hard Bar, a restaurant and nightclub upstairs with a casino downstairs. He showed us a well-rounded picture of how the people of Esteli live. But we can to learn about cigars and he did not disappoint. From David’s tour of the Plasencia Cigar Factory and fields as well as our own blending session, we got the whole picture.

Just outside the city he showed us acres and acres of sungrown and shadegrown vegas with a sophisticated watering and fertilizing system and large barns for air drying the leaves and small ones for growing seedlings. If the farmers want to produce seed, they allow the flowers on the top of the plant to grow, if the plant is for the harvesting of leaves, they remove the flowers early. The most interesting thing I learned about the tobacco plant is it only has so many leaves. Once those are picked, no more will grow.

Leaves on the plant serve a different purpose, depending on what part of the plant grows. Seco, which comes from the bottom of the plant, receives the least amount of sunlight and has the least amount of color and oil in it, making it a milder leaf. The middle of the plant is known as the Viso and the top the Ligero, with the strongest flavor. The 80-90-degree highs and 60-65-degree lows in Nicaragua are the ideal temperatures for growing tasty, tasty leaves.

When I took my first step into the Plasencia cigar factory, the aroma hit me, and it was breathtaking. The smell of fresh rolled cigars and aging tobacco coupled with the cleanliness and provincial look of the buildings made me realize these are professionals. While the factory was large and the amount of tobacco that runs through there was amazingly large, the efficiency and implementation of the process were more than what I experienced in the states.

Our tour guide, David, took us first to the Pilon room first, where the tobaccos is aged after it arrives in the factory. The tobacco is put into hands (a group of 20 similar leaves tied together for easy handling) then stacked in pilons and rotated for even fermentation. They humidify the room to draw out the ammonia which gets rid of the nicotine. Standing in a football field sized-room full of fermenting tobacco is not a pleasant experience. The smell of ammonia was so strong some people had to leave the room. Nevertheless, David stood and explained the aging process to the die-hards.

Quality control is paramount in cigar factories. None more apparent than in the next step, their efforts to ensure no tobacco beetles. Each factory we toured dealt with this a little differently, but the main process involved freezing the tobacco then slowly thawing it to kill the beetles and the eggs.

The tobacco is still not ready to roll, after bundling, freezing and aging, it gets sorted and stripped. Much of the stem will be stripped from the tobacco leaf, leaving a small part to be used as filler while the better part becomes wrapper or binder. The leaves are sorted and sorted again by color and type.

We also got to experience a blending session. We went into a boardroom and sat around a table where David opened a box of “puritos,” small cigars rolled from one type of leaf and one from each of the four regions of Nicaragua. All the varietals were created from Habano seed plants. The leaves (the seco, viso and ligero) were from Esteli, the Condega Valley, Jalapa, and Omatepe. Each of the regions has its own kind of soil, which makes an astonishing difference in the flavor of the tobacco.

After sampling all the varietals, we went into a special blending room. We were there to help the owner of Tabakado Sigarenwinkel in Eindhoven, Netherlands with the blend of her house brand cigars. The master blender and the master roller were also in the room, creating cigars for us to sample. In the end, the ultimate choice belonged to the shopkeeper, but she agreed with the consensus of the group and a new blend for her shop was born.

Our group also went through the AJ Fernandez factory, our second surprise tour. Cigar factories are designed with one thing in mind, a perfect final product; perfection in the look as well as the taste. Despite the fact they create between 10 and 12 million cigars a year, making over 40,000 daily, they take each cigar through many quality checks to ensure a good product.

When a cigar is rolled, before the final wrapper is applied, they are draw tested to make sure the quality of the draw is the right pressure, so the air will flow through the body of the cigar bringing with it plenty of smoke. After making sure it’s perfect on the inside, they perfect the outside. After the rollers wrapped the cigars, they were sorted and bundled by wrapper color, assuring that when the customer opens the box of cigars, the look is uniform. They are then put into the Aging Room, the Spanish cedar-lined room where the cigars are laid down to rest in wheels (large bundles) or shaping presses for the box pressed cigars. It gives the wrapper and the filler time to blend flavors and reach a consistent humidity.

The perfection process in completed in the last rooms where workers use measuring devices to line up all the rings perfectly, put cellophane on each cigar to protect them, and wrap each box for a finished look.

After all the touring and learning, we ended the trip with a visit to the beach. When we pulled into the Hotel Aáki at Las Peñitas it was like pulling into the parking lot of a little slice of heaven. We checked into our room and found our room had the best view. Outside the sliding glass doors of our room were the pool and lounge area, a beach bar and the Pacific Ocean. It was the perfect end to a perfect vacation in an amazing country.