Tuesday, August 23 2011
Q: I'm not sure you'd publish this since we wouldn't want to get anyone in trouble, but there is a cigar shop in my city which, in addition to the brands you often write about on your site, offers
cigars with no label wrapped in a white tissue. The owner tells me that once a year he travels to Honduras, buys a quantity of Cuban tobacco, and hires a local to roll it. The cigars are then brought into the USA as "Honduran" cigars. I smoked one and found it pleasantly earthy and peppery, with a surprisingly "leafy" tasting
head - unlike the more widely available CAOs and
Rocky Patel cigars I'm familiar with. When I recently went back to buy another, I told him I was looking for the special cigars in white tissue.
"Ahh, the Cubans," he replied.
I'm surprised that he is so open about what he is doing with me, some guy who just stepped in from the street. On the other
hand, I would guess few people outside of Florida would object, and my city is about as far from Florida as you can get without being able to legally buy a
Havana Montecristo. Do you believe he is doing what he says, and are there many other people doing it?
- Dan in the Pacific Northwest
A: This is a great story. Though I only have your word to go on, I am not all that surprised.
I recently heard about a South American factory that was doing something similar - rolling Cuban tobacco into cigars "
handmade" in that country and shipped with said country's seal. No doubt, this is one way around U.S. Customs. The only thing the store owner might also be doing, just to be safe, is using Honduran
wrapper leaf. (I believe the aforementioned factory was using a Peruvian wrapper leaf on their
blend.) Moreover, though I have no proof, nor have I heard from anyone in the cigar business about this practice, I wouldn't doubt if there were some Cuban emigres in Miami and Tampa who are able to get small quantities of Cuban leaf and are rolling them down there, too.
The only thing I can add is, let's get this dopey Cuban embargo over with already.
