![]() ![]() The next day the leaves are moved from the casing room to the second floor of the factory, where they are stripped of their center veins. ![]() This system has replaced the old method of men shaking leaves under a mister, or simple wooden racks in a room that was filled with moist air. The poles move in circles along tracks through a steady stream of mist for several hours up to a day. At La Corona there are three glass-sided machines, each with seven- to eight-foot-high poles with arms on which the tobacco is hung. Today in many cigar factories-even in Cuba-this has become an ultra-mechanized process. The hands, each tied with a string, are placed in a container and then moved to the moistening, or casing, room. Two men, Torres Medina and Castillo (neither gave their first names) said they had been doing the job for more than 50 years. One bundle still on the floor wore the stenciled letters V D-1, which designates a specific farm in the Viñales region, a notation of type (seco), the crop year (2009) and then a weight for the bundle.įrom there the leaves go into a kind of first stage revision room, where the leaves in the bundle are counted by zafadores, or sorters, and given a quick once-over for quality and tied together in bunches of leaves known as hands. The tobacco arrives in big bundles, wrapped in either burlap or palm fronds, and marked with codes designating where the leaves are from. In early June, La Corona’s storage room was almost empty because the new month’s shipment hadn’t arrived, although it wasĮxpected later in the week. According to Hernandez Fuente, the factory receives a tobacco shipment about once a month from the main warehouse of Tabacuba, where the tobacco is aged and stored. It’s the first area for tobacco classification. The metal gates that open on Avenida 20 de Maio lead into a large loading zone, which has direct access to a storage space that feels like a basement. La Corona was open, and it was a good choice: in fact, I had never visited there before, so I approached it with a fresh eye. ![]() The request took some time to filter through the bureaucracy of Habanos S.A., and the week I arrived, several factories had actually been shut down due to the excessive humidity in Havana during the last week of May and early June. Rather, I asked to be taken on the same journey a single tobacco leaf makes from the time it comes through the front door until it leaves in a box. I have toured dozens of cigar factories in my 20 years at Cigar Aficionado, but this time I wanted to do more than just walk around. The multistory building makes a host of cigars: Romeo y Julieta, Hoyo de Monterrey, Cuaba, Por Larrañaga, Saint Luis Rey, San Cristóbal de la Habana, and, like nearly every cigarmaking facility in Cuba, some Montecristos. Factory manager Roddy Manuel Valdez and Osmar Hernandez Fuente, his number two, are settling in to oversee one of the biggest cigar factories in Havana. The workers are filtering into the building, getting ready for another day of making cigars. To the south, a green belt contributes to a healthful atmosphere.īy 7:30 in the morning, Avenida 20 de Maio is bustling with buses, motorbikes and a steady stream of old cars passing in front of the La Corona Cigar Factory. Over 14 kilometers of excellent beaches lie to the east of the Cuban capital. These styles range from the pre-baroque to the baroque, neo-Gothic, neoclassical, eclectic, art noveau and art-deco, to the modern.Īlejo Carpentier, one of Cuba's most famous authors, called it "the city of columns" and focused attention on its streets, which he considered a perennially rich show of life, humanity and contrasts that was bound to entertain any observer. The Cuban capital consists of an immense number of buildings in a wide range of architectural styles, built in the course of nearly five centuries. Starting in 1634, because of its strategic location, San Cristobal de La Habana was considered the key to the New World-as attested to by royal letters patent-and the main defense of the West Indies. Founded on its present site in 1519, the settlement of San Cristobal de La Habana prospered mainly due to its bay, which was a natural port of call for ships sailing to and from the New World. The Old Havana and system of forts led UNESCO to declare it a part of world heritage in 1982. Though only around 280 square miles (727 square kilometers) in size-0.65 percent of the archipelago's total area. Vedado Hotel La Corona Cigar Factory is located in HavanaĬapital of Cuba and the country's administrative, political, cultural and scientific center, it is also the capital of two provinces: City of Havana and Havana. ![]()
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