Sunday, March 09 2008
By Harry Hurt III
The New York Times
(Published: March 8, 2008)
I crouched over a wooden bench inside the rolling room in El Credito Cigars' factory in the Little
Havana neighborhood of Miami, peering at a light brown tobacco leaf. It was half past 9 on a Monday morning, and I had just gulped down two paper thimbles of Cuban coffee. My
head was buzzing with caffeine and ambient cigar smoke. My mentor, Leo Peraza, a 67-year-old Cuban-born master cigar roller in a blue apron, leaned over my
shoulder.
"Mira," Leo said in Spanish, beckoning me to watch him work.
Leo stretched the tobacco leaf across a wooden cutting board. He picked up a crescent-shaped knife called a chavetta and trimmed away the upper and lower edges of the leaf. Then he placed a second leaf on the cutting board and handed over the chavetta.
"God help me!" I exclaimed.
Article continues at nytimes.com...
