newsletter — spring 2002

CUBAN CIGARS: A PRIMER

s the story goes, it was the early 60s, and tensions flared between the U.S. and Cuba. President John F. Kennedy took aside his press secretary, Pierre Salinger, and gave him a top-secret directive: find as many of the president's favorite Cuban cigars ("Petit Upmans") and report back at once. By the next day, Salinger had secured 1,500. Satisfied, Kennedy signed the Cuban trade embargo, cutting off Americans from their cigar supply — his own secret stash entact.

It's been almost four decades since then, and it's still illegal for Americans to buy Cuban cigars. But that doesn't mean we can't talk about them…

The best Cuban cigars are still handmade, rolled by craftsmen and women, many of whose mothers and fathers were cigar-rollers before them. Taking extreme pride in their work, these cigar rollers—known as "torcedores"—must start as apprentices, for a period of nine months. If they graduate (and many don't) they begin by rolling smaller petit corona cigars, moving up through the years in the cohiba's direction.

Torcedores work in large rooms filled with school-class-like desks, separating out the best leaves, wielding their work-knives—chavetas— and rolling close to a hundred cigars per day. Yet despite the cigar's glorified role in Cuban society, "torcedores" have not been spared the country's economic hardships — for all their work, they earn about $20 U.S. per month.

After they're rolled, the cigars are then passed along to gentlemen known as "catadores," who hold the envy-inspiring job of professionally taste-testing the cigars and grading them (they drink sugarless tea to rejuvenate their taste buds after their morning work, then begin again the next dawn). The cigars are graded, fumigated, placed in pinewood boxes, then sent off to market.

There are several cigar factories open to visitors in Havana (all of which charge an entry fee and are therefore illegal to visit under the provisions of the U.S. trade embargo). The largest and most frequently visited is "Las Casa del Habanos in Old Havana" (#530 Barcelona y Dragones), which features tours of working areas, plus a huge walk-in humidor and a private smoking lounge.

A word of caution to tourists who take it upon themselves to buy cigars in Havana: don't buy cigars on the street, unless you don't care about quality. Only use dedicated and well-know cigar outlets, like the above-mentioned "Las Casa del Habanos." And remember, if you're American, and a U.S. Customs official finds an unsmoked cigar in your baggage . . . there's no way to talk yourself out of trouble. That's all for this month from CruiseHavana.

bon voyage, CruiseHavana