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vrijdag 16 juli 2010

Fabrica de Tabacos "EL LAGUITO" La Habana






And yes this is the birthplace of the Cohiba Brand Fabrica de Tabacos "EL LAGUITO"
unfortunately you can't visit this factory as a tourist but I had a meeting with the Director of El Laquito, my friend Arnaldo Ovalles BriƱones so i wanted to share some thoughts about this famous cigar place.
Here they make a big portion of the Cohiba brand, not all but the better stuff is made here, this factory does maybe 2.5 million cigars a year and i have to say that i saw some nice aged tobacco, in a lot of factories in Cuba you see young tobacco but in here in El Laguito they receive the better stuff, apart from the tobacco i smoked some nice cigars too, i smoked a lancero (see picture)which wasn't great and i smoked the New Behike, which is the newest release of Habanos in the legendary Cohiba line, i smoked the BHK 54, the one i smoked was fresh but still one off the better (fresh) cuban cigars i smoked so far, it was not a powerhouse but a well balanced medium and smooth smoke which i think will be much better if aged a little.
All in all this is a really nice place to hang out, as always the people are super friendly the only thing what is somehow disturbing is the speakersystem throughout the factory where you hear the terrible voice of the Lectora talking about politics.
i hate politics so i am getting tired if it's pushed up on you, sorry but i had to say it, anyway apart from that it's great, cigars are made really nice with triple cap head, every single cigar is draw tested and the quality control is really up to the highest level, i have the feeling that despite a lot of people think that the cigarrollers in Cuba are not motivated to make good quality, here in El Laguito they are, now if you ask me that i would pay $ 20 for these cigars, i have to say no,
the quality is for sure better then Cuba's average but of course you pay for the name. But that's not only with Cohiba's or Cuban's in general, i feel the same with product from davidoff, OVERPRICED
I don't like to pay for cigars but i love it if someone gives them to me, and that's exactly what they did, so i enjoyed them much better.

Cuba



It's always a pleasure to travel to Cuba, maybe Cuba doesn't make the most consistant cigar in the world but yes, they have tradition, end March i went down to Cuba to meet with my friends from Tabacuba & Habanos, besides visiting Pinar del Rio i took the time to visit some of the factories in Habana, so this brought me to one of the oldest and most famous Partagas factory ones owned by the Cifuente Brothers, if you enter this factory you think that the time has stand still, it looks probably exact the same as 60 years ago, only the people have changed, here they produce the world famous Partagas cigars.
I had the pleasure to meet the people who run the factory, and exhanged thoughts about cigar making, blending, cigar construction & quality control, the Cuban cigar industry is conducted by the instituto del Tobacco in San Antonio, here they conduct the growing blending & making of the puro cubano,
To help you directly out of the dream, blends are not made in the factories anymore , this is done in the institute of tobacco, they workout the blends and if approved the orders are given to the various departments involved, who will then supply the needed tobacco to the factories and instruct them what to produce out of it, this is todays reality.
On quality control there is some improvement and it's for sure much better then 10 - 15 years ago when cuba had a lot of draw issues, today the mayority of the premium brands are subjected to individual draw testing, only aspect which i found less spectacular is that Cuba is not to much strict in using the same wrapper on the same cigars, let me explain; in todays wrapper variaties you have Criollo 98, Corojo 99Habana 2000 and some new seeds called HVA (Havana Vuelta Arriba) and Corojo 2006
which are seed type's which came out of intensive investigations of the institute,
you might think that for every blend they choose a certain wrapper, but what surprised me is that for the cuban's this isn't important for them
"color & texture" are the way to go, this results in that for the same blend / brand, the wrapper might be a Criollo 98, Corojo 99 , HVA or whatever is available as long the Color & Texture match is similar they are OK.
What they say is that tastewise there might be a little difference, but they are all from the same seed family so the final outcome in their opinion is so similar that they feel it's OK to work like that.
I thought a lot about this issue thinking of all the Non Cuban cigar manufacturers who are worring themselfs by going crazy about wrappers, consistency, flavor etc etc while Cuba has the name and wave's all the worries away by just going by color & Texture.
Despite their opion my personal believe hasn't changed, i believe that it does matter to look into seed & Flavor to make consistant cigars, where is do agree is texture but then more in the difference between the crop's, some crop might have differences between the texture of the various primings, in some cased the veins are more pronounced or the leave contains a little more oil but apart from that i really feel that that all the aspects need to be as similar as possible, Flavor, Color, Texture and if possible even shine but this is part depends also mvery much on the roller,if a roller applies the wrapper leaf , he or she can let the shine come out more by keeping the leaf under more pressure while applying, the only risk of doing this is that by leafs with lesser texture the wrapper might crack while smoking, since the binder & filler bellow put's pressure on the wrapper when heated up.

Let me get back to the differences in texture between the various primings & crop's
by giving an practical example, currently we are using a cuban seed wrapper grown in Ecuador which came from the first 2008 crop stage grown between May & August, when i was inspecting the same primings grown in the same periode of 2009 i saw a big difference in texture, the priming 5-6 of 2009 didn't had the same texture as the 5-6 priming of 2008. To get the same texture i had to move up to priming 7-8 from 2009.
Now as a manufacturer you have to look, feel, smoke this and make sure to pay attention to this every time since the 2009 crop came out more fino due to more rain
so the average leaf texture was a more thin had lesser veins and lesser oil contents then the 2008 crop.
Lesson is that if you don't pay attention and just buy based on primings you go wrong, this need to be checked from crop to crop to ensure consistancy.
Rather then that usage of different seed type's for the same blend is out of the question for me.
Now it's time to smoke something but stay tunned i will write more about this trip, since i visited much more places and was present on the birthday of the late Alejandro Robaina who passed away 3 weeks later.

donderdag 15 juli 2010

Cigar Box Bottom Stamp


Here our boxstamp we use for our own products.
i think it is good to have so the product can be always tracked back to us the manufacturer, for private label brands we don't use it unless the client want's to have it.