Portrait of a cigar: Puros Indios

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			Portrait of a cigar: Puros Indios Rolando Reyes Sr., the founder and owner of the Puros Indios Cigars Company, is one of the most respected and admired people in the cigar world. He knows all there is to know about tobacco, including how to roll cigars. And not just ordinary cigars – there are quite a lot of people who know how to do that – but how to roll a ‘diadem’ – a format that is considered the most difficult even for experienced torcedores. He began working with tobacco almost seventy years ago, rolling cigars at the Partagas, H. Upmann and Romeo y Julieta factories in Cuba. Then came revolution, emigration and attempts to set up his own business. Rolando Reyes Sr. brought his first brand, Cuba Aliados, from Cuba and continued its production in the United States, where he tried to achieve a result that was as close as possible to the original by mixing various tobaccos that he came across. Puros Indios cigars appeared in 1995, when Don Ronaldo had all but moved to Honduras so as to be closer to his developing cigar production and take full control of the whole production process – from selecting the tobacco to testing the draw on the finished cigars. By 1995, Reyes Sr. had an exclusive contract with the JR Cigars Company, according to which all cigars manufactured by him could be sold in the United States only through this distributor. His own attempts to sell Puros Indios independently resulted in a long legal battle, as a result of which even the production of Cuba Aliados cigars was halted for a period of several years. The problems were not finally solved until there was a personal meeting between Don Ronaldo and Lou Rothman, the owner of JR Cigars. Puros Indios cigars are unique in that the tobacco used to make them comes from four countries in Latin America and South America: the wrapper and binder leaves come from Ecuador, and the filler is a mixture of Nicaraguan, Dominican and Brazilian tobaccos. The contents of the cigars have not changed for almost ten years. In 1995 two million Puros Indios cigars were produced; in 1997, this number rose sharply to six million. Since then, the growth has not been quite so significant – about 15% per year. The Puros Indios line contained numerous varieties from the moment the brand appeared, when more than ten different formats came on the market. One format that is particularly worth noting is the famous Chief. A giant, it is the world’s largest serially produced cigarwith a length of almost 46cm and a diameter of 26mm. This year the number of Puros Indios formats reached twenty, and two of the new versions of the Corona Gorda format – Nos. 5 and 10 – were put on show at the RTDA exhibition. One other feature distinguishes Puros Indios cigars. It’s a well-known fact that many smokers choose a cigar from its external appearance, which includes the colour of the wrapper leaf. Rolando Reyes offers four different wrapper-leaf alternatives for his cigars: light Colorado claro, reddish Colorado, dark maduro and almost black double maduro. by ANNA ARANOVSKAYA