Trip of a Lifetime

As someone who enjoys the occasional cigar, in October 2004 I got the opportunity of a lifetime. Rocky Patel, owner of Indian Tabac Cigar Company, co-hosted a steak and cigar dinner in Madison, Wisconsin that I attended. He was sending a small group of people to Honduras to visit the cigar manufacturing companies that make his cigars, including his 1990 Vintage (that I fell in love with) he introduced that night. And it was on his dime.

The host of the dinner, Matthew of Madison Wine and Cigar Room, offered me a spot and I could not
turn him down.

We flew into Tegucigalpa, Honduras, via Miama. As a student pilot, the flight alone was quite entertaining. Luckily I had a window seat. All around Miama and southern Florida there were wonderful cumulous clouds stretching from about 1000 feet above the ground up several miles, and we were flying through and between them.

The flight over Honduras was stunning. The entire country is a mass of lush green mountains and valleys. The landing in Tegucigalpa is incredible. The city is situated in a valley, and as we come in from the east, the plane spirals around to the south, east, and to the north onto the runway. The plane is turning steeply the entire time, with mountains off the right wing and ground, houses, and people off the left wing. I noticed several VASI situated on the side of the mountains as we descended. As we rolled to a stop at the end of the runway and turned onto the taxiway, I looked out the window and saw the edge of the runway RIGHT THERE off the wing. Amazing!

One of the cigar company managers, Jesus, was there to help us through customs and board a bus containing sandwiches, beer (and water), and Nimish, Rocky's partner, and host. As the bus left the airport for Danli, sandwiches, beer, and cigars were handed around. Apparently we were to start immediately sampling some new blends they had been working on.

The hospitality was wonderful. After the 2 hour bus ride through glorious valleys and over mountain passes, we arrived at a villa in Danli that they rent for these occasions. We settled in, had dinner, and socialized, and prepared for the following two full days where we toured two cigar manufacturers, including Central American Cigar Factory (left), a tobacco manufacturer, and tobacco fields.

From Seed to Leaf

The Central American Cigar Factory can produce over 100,000 cigars a day. A typical box of cigars will have almost 300 individual people involved from the time the seeds are planted to the time the box is shipped.

Most premium cigars are composed of several types of tobacco, typically three kinds of filler tobacco, where the cigar gets most of its taste and complexity, a binder, which helps bundle the filler, and the wrapper, which gives the cigar its color and other specific flavors. The type and amount of filler tobacco combined forms the cigar's blend. Cigars containing predominantly Honduran tobacco typically have a unique flavor compared to primarily Nicaraguan blends. Lots of factors are involved in a specific tobacco's flavor, including the nature of the local soil, how much sun it receives, whether it is sun or shade grown, and the particular process used to dry and ferment the tobacco.

All tobacco starts from seeds. Filler seeds can be fairly cheap but some types of wrapper seeds, especially for sun-grown tobacco, can be quite expensive. Only the best seeds are cultivated from generation to generation, and it is an exacting science.

Trays of seeds are prepared and placed in large nurseries where they are carefully tended. As sprouts appear the smaller ones are removed by hand, until only one healthy plant is left in each container. These are grown over several weeks until each plant is several inches high.

When they have grown enough each plant is transplanted to the tabacco fields. Some fields are configured for sun-grown tobacco, and some are shade-grown. Sun-grown tobacco gets much more sun, and therefore grow larger and end up with a hartier, spicier flavor.

The plants grow several feet tall and have nicely soft and hearty leaves. These are grown over several months and tended by hundreds of workers, who probably take for granted the fantastic scenery they are subject to every day.

When the leaves are ready to be harvested, the bottom-most two leaves are removed from each plant. These two leaves are tied together and moved to the drying barns, where they are hung from racks several levels high. As the plant grows, this process is repeated. The barns are kept at a consistent temperature and humidity and the leaves slowly dry over several weeks. The temperature of each section of leaves is monitored every hour, 24 hours of day. When the groups of leaves reach the appropriate temperature, they are bundled up and shipped to the manufacturing companies.

Tobacco from the fields is sent to fermentation rooms at the various manufacturing companies. Some companies, like Central American Cigar Factory, do everything, from field to box, while others only produce fermented tobacco ready to be made into cigars.

The fermentation process is what turns simple tobacco leaves into something people want to actually smoke. It is a process of combining water and pressure on large palettes of compressed leaves. The resulting humidity and pressure raise the temperature of the leaves (up to 140 degrees or higher), which cause a chemical reaction that produces ammonia. These fermentation rooms are unbearably hot and the ammonia smell is extreme. Many of us were gagging and coughing with watering eyes, but it was a very interesting experience.

After fermentation, each leaf is carefully inspected and sorted by color, quality, and thickness. Imperfections in the leaves such as tears, holes, or thin areas, are also noted. Pristine, undamaged leaves end up as wrappers, and the others will end up as filler or binder.

At this point, the sorted tobacco might be shipped to other cigar companies around the world, or put into storage until it is needed locally.

From Leaf to Cigar

Once leaves are ready to be made into cigars, they start moving from hand to hand quickly. One important step is the removal of the stem. Some companies do this by hand, in order to save as much tobacco as possible, while others use machines. This might be one of only two machine used in the entire process!

Once the blend is chosen for a particular kind of cigar, workers will prepare trays of filler leaves of the appropriate proportions. These trays are sent to the cigar builders, who are divided into groups. One group puts the filler blends together and wraps them with the binder. These bundles are put into large presses which compress the leaves together tightly.

Another group of people takes the pressed bundles of filler and binder and uses another machine to test the draw. The machine sucks air through the bundle and indicates the pressure on a gauge. If the draw is too "tight", the bundle is sent back to a worker who takes it apart and starts over.

Finally, a group of works wraps the cigars in the wrapper leaf, which is usually the highest-quality leaf with specific characteristics chosen to give the cigar its overall look and feel.

Your average cigar worker makes about $7US a day, and can produce about 300 cigars in a day.

From here the cigars go to the quality control department who look at each cigar and make sure it lives up to the particular standards expected. They are sorted by color and character so that all of the cigars that go into a particular box have a consistent look and quality. Bundle cigars are put into storage at this point.

At this point labels are applied. This is done carefully so all of the labels in the box line up exactly. The labeled cigars are then put into boxes and stored for shipping.

One particularly amazing thing about Central American Cigar Factory was they did everything. They had an entire set of buildings dedicated to box construction. Beginning with raw lumber, they cut and fabricated all of the individual pieces of each type of box and glued them together, applied hinges, paint, and graphics.

My trip to Honduras was a fascinating experience. It is astounding how hard these people work to produce such an amazingly-complex thing as a cigar.

I encourage anyone reading this to try a Rocky Patel Vintage 1990. It is one of my favorite cigars, and I am happy to have seen the quality construction involved personally!

See the complete gallery here.