In theory and in practice

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			In theory and in practice The unpredictable winter weather almost threatened the appearance of two of the seminar guests – Rafael Nodal, President of the Havana Cuba Cigar Company and Bill Perdomo, International Sales Director of Tabacalera Perdomo. The heavy snow resulted in their plane from London having to make a forced landing at St. Petersburg. But the greatest worry was endured by the party that was due to meet them, as the fate of the expected arrivals remained unknown for almost twelve hours! This was exactly as long as it took for Nodal and Perdomo to overcome the language barrier, purchase two rail tickets to Moscow, and reach the Renaissance Moskva Hotel at the appointed time for the holding of the Big Smoke festival. A number of famous cigar manufacturers came to Moscow to take part in a programme of seminars for the 6th Big Smoke Cigar Festival, which was held on February 15 and 16. They came not only to show their products, but to share their experience with Russian aficionados. “To speed things up at the customs in St. Petersburg,” said Rafael Nodal a bit later, “I told them that all the cigars I was carrying for the Big Smoke were intended for Mr. Putin.” But basically, both Rafael Nodal and his friend, Bill Perdomo, enjoyed their little adventure in the wastes of snowy Russia. The other experts – Didier Houvenaghel, President of the Nicarao Company, Helmut Bührle, CEO and owner of the Laura Chavin Company, and Willy Alvero, General Representative of Habanos S.A. in Russia – all arrived at the venue without any mishap. It’s worth pointing out that the guest speakers did not simply read lectures on various aspects of the cigar industry, but tried to pass on what they themselves had learned on their own ‘cigar journey’. The seminar programme ended with a very useful master-class, in which Ernesto Cabana, a leading expert from the Tabacalera Company, and Alexis, a Cuban cigar roller, related the subtleties of rolling cigars so clearly and with such emotion that none of the guests were left in any doubt that the cigar in theory and practice was indeed a festival. Bill Perdomo, younger brother of Nick Perdomo, the president of Tabacalera Perdomo, is responsible for the company’s international sales. Bill loves figures – and that is hardly surprising. Over the last three years under his directorship, the family concern, which has been in existence for just over seven years, has increased its export of cigars to the countries of Europe and Asia from four to twenty-four percent of its total production. And this, it has to be agreed, is no bad indicator at all for a company producing some eleven million cigars a year. But Bill loves cigars and his brother at least as much as he loves figures. His talk was devoted to the creation of the Tabacalera Perdomo Company, which is closely tied with the history of his family, and to coincidences and favourable convergences of circumstances. “When my brother and I were small, our father and our grandfather who had been involved with cigars before emigrating from Cuba always told us to go to college, find a proper job and forget all about cigars. And that’s what happened: Nick became an air-traffic controller and I went to university. But even so, Nick took a risk and opened a small factory in Miami. From morning till three in the afternoon, he would work at the factory, and then he would go off to work till midnight as an air-traffic controller. “The first factory’s premises were no more than twenty five square metres. During the first year it produced a little over nineteen thousand cigars, which we packed away at home. The way we sold them was by simply ringing people on spec from the telephone directory and asking them if they wanted to buy cigars. A year later, there was a cigar boom and sales quadrupled. My brother stopped working as an air-traffic controller and worked with the cigars full time. “After a while, it became clear that producing cigars in Miami was not profitable, so Nick turned to my father and grandfather for help. My father went on a reconnaissance mission to Nicaragua. When he returned, it was decided to move the Tabacalera Perdomo to Nicaragua where, according to my father, the local soil and climatic conditions were in many respects similar to those in Cuba. Today, we have five of our own plantations and we produce sixteen brands of cigar. And we are very pleased that things turned out exactly the way they did.” Until 1995, Helmut Bührle, a German aristocrat living in his own castle at Hochdorf, had no intention whatsoever of getting involved in the manufacture of cigars. He was a successful designer working for Hermes and Dior. He loved equestrian sports, collected wines, but his only contact with cigars was smoking them. But when he was already in his forties, Herr Bührle decided on a very risky step – to wave goodbye to his employers and set up a business of his own. But Herr Bührle’s ambitions were extremely high. What he wanted to do above all else was to create one of the best cigars in the world. Why precisely it should have the name Laura Chavin was one of the things Herr Bührle told us in his lecture. “Producing your own cigars is a highly sophisticated business, but thinking up a cigar from scratch is far more complex. When I took the serious decision of creating an excellent cigar, I wanted to ask the advice of some of my mother’s friends. The thing was that before the Second World War, my mother, who loved cigars herself, had produced Longfello cigars and been a personal friend of Zino Davidoff and Alfred Dunhill. When my mother’s friends asked me about the sort of cigar I had in mind, apart from all the details on the choice of region, the type of tobacco and the manufacturer, I told them that the name I wanted to call it was Laura Chavin. Laura is the name of my favourite daughter; Chavin is the ancestral name of all the women in our family. In other words, for me the name of the cigar would be a sort of bridge between my daughter and my mother, between the future and the past. “When I said this, one of the consultants remarked caustically: ‘Remember this, Helmut: people will never buy a cigar with a woman’s name’. But I took the risk: the name was as important to me as the creation of my own cigar. And time has proved that I was not wrong: the Laura Chavin brand has lots of devotees throughout the world. And it’s extremely pleasant to know that what is important and dear to you yourself is something that lots of people like.” Although Rafael Nodal was trained as a doctor, it was no chance event that got him involved with cigars, but rather his family tradition. But it so happened, that he began his cigar business not with traditional cigars, but with flavoured Oliveros cigars. Rafael Nodal spent several years absorbed in the technicalities of producing premium class flavoured cigars until he became one of the world’s experts in this fairly rare occupation. The Oliveros brand won innumerable devotees throughout the world, and Rafael’s company, Havana Cuba, built a new factory, where it began manufacturing cigars of the same name with the intention of putting a new brand on the market. In his talk, Rafael spoke exclusively about flavoured cigars and paid tribute to the person who first had the idea of manufacturing quality cigars with different tastes. “Flavoured cigars were not produced on an industrial scale until after the Cuban revolution – when the Cubans, deprived of the factories they had owned for several generations, were forced to use other production methods. One of these people was Olivero Amperes, who came to the Dominican Republic in 1962 and began growing tobacco. By the late nineteen eighties, when the cigar boom had begun in the United States, he organized the production of flavoured cigars under the Oliveros brand. At the time, flavoured cigars in general were of low quality. To save time, producers simply sprayed the whole cigar with the aromatized flavour. But this had the result of directly contradicting the whole purpose of flavouring cigars, which was that the additional aroma should provide the maximum variety of tastes during smoking – an effect which could only be achieved by aromatizing all the leaves in the cigar. “Olivero Amperes realized this before anyone else, when he created the Oliveros brand. And now, when the production of these cigars is in the hands of the Havana Cuba Company, we carefully follow and even improve upon the innovations of the man whose name our flavoured cigars bear.” Didier Houvenaghel is a graduate engineer-agronomist. As a young man from the family of a Belgian professor, he did his post graduate studies in Colombia and Chile, and wrote his thesis in Cuba. After university, he went to Paris to work for the European Commission. Five years ago, he got the idea of creating his own brand of cigar, the Nicarao, and three years later began its production in Nicaragua. Didier no longer works for the European Commission, but is still based in Paris, though he spends five months of the year in Nicaragua, where he puts his theories into practice. In May, a French publisher is due to publish a book by Houvenaghel on cigars. At the Moscow seminar, he explained what has to be known about growing tobacco so as to be sure that it produces good cigars. “Growing tobacco is the basis of the cigar industry, so it is a process which has to be approached with all possible thoroughness and caution. It is difficult to imagine that a tobacco leaf has such a variety of characteristics. Take, for example, its physical parameters: burning, colour, texture, elasticity, shine, ability to absorb water from the air (hygroscopicity). Depending on the tier from which the leaf was picked, it will contain various physical parameters, each of which affects the part of the cigar that the leaf will eventually become. Then there are its chemical perameters, which are at least as many and just as important. “I am certain that before planting the tobacco, it is necessary to make a chemical analysis of the soil, and on this basis draw conclusions as to how best to fertilize the plant and what else it might need. If there’s not enough moisture, artificial irrigation may be required. It’s also necessary to remove the tops of the tobacco bushes so that the lower leaves can get lush. All this I studied at university, but I can say for certain that it wasn’t till I created my own cigar brand that I really felt and understood the subtleties of growing tobacco.” Willy Alvero is a man who embodies the very essence of the word ‘aficionado’. A subtle connoisseur of cigar culture, he can bring light to bear on any theme connected with cigars. He is used to speaking to audiences of all kinds, whether they are students of the Aficionado Cigar School, professional sommeliers, journalists or the public at large. Willy Alvero is a natural public speaker, who can always find an easy way to get through to the most unenlightened or the most demanding of audiences. At the seminar, he spoke at some length on choosing a cigar in a restaurant, from which it would appear that the first problem facing the smoker is not choosing the cigar, but choosing the restaurant. “Far from all restaurants will allow you to enjoy a cigar, so you have to choose one that is cigar-smoker friendly. In Europe, for instance, there is what they call a Cigar Gourmet Programme, and each restaurant that participates in it has its own ‘quality sign’ and its staff undergo special ‘cigar training’ two or three times a year. “These restaurants work with major cigar suppliers that provide all sorts of information on their products so that sommeliers can give customers objective information and not foist their own tastes on them. Also, in restaurants of this kind cigars are properly stored, and the humidors are not put in the kitchen or the storeroom, but in the hall where it can be seen that they are kept properly. Customers can also be offered a special cigar menu which should contain suggested combinations of cigar and alcohol and provide a cigar’s gustatory specifications. In Russia, I recommend smoking cigars in restaurants that observe these rules without advertising the fact.” Ernesto Cabana is a leading expert from the Tabacalera Company. He was born and raised in Cuba, but has lived in Moscow for many years. He came here to study at a military college, but soon decided to devote himself to cigars which he’d been keen on since his early youth. To hold a master-class on the secrets of hand-rolling cigars, Ernest invited Alexis, an experienced Cuban cigar-roller, to Moscow. As a duet (with Alexis doing the rolling and Ernesto providing the commentary), they demonstrated with a certain amount of emotion how real Havana cigars come into the world. “There are several ways of rolling a cigar, but only a cigar that has been completely rolled by hand from long, whole leaves is called a premium. In Cuba (unlike in Nicaragua or Honduras, where the rollers work in pairs), rollers work alone. The roller makes the ‘doll’ from the filler and the binding, and places it in the wrapper leaf. The number of tobacco leaves that the roller gets at the factory are carefully recorded in a special book. Binder and filler leaves are given out by weight, but the wrapper leaves are counted individually. A roller’s tools consist of an oak board, a special knife called a chavetta, a guillotine for cutting the cigar to a standard format, and a special tool for cutting the cap. The roller is also given odourless natural glue, which is made from ground tobacco stalks. But a roller’s main tools are his hands.”