Cigars HQ

How Important Is The Tobacco?

Posted on 1/9/2008 at 11:21:39 AM

Not only must the tobacco be of consistent high quality, but it must also be correctly processed. If he is to maintain consistency in taste and aroma in his cigars, a producer must be able to ensure a consistent supply of the same types of tobaccos that go into the blends. Since crop years vary as to the availability of the various types of tobaccos yielded, he must be able to buy a sufficiently large stock of a particular leaf when the availability presents itself in order to protect against short supply due to drought, heavy rains or to too much or too little sunshine, political upheaval in tobacco growing regions of the world, etc. This requires sufficient financial resources, if high quality and consistency are to be maintained. The alternative is to buy leaf hand to mouth from whatever becomes available, therefore rendering it impossible to keep blends consistent, and possibly subjecting the cigar to inferior leaf.

Unless a manufacturer has the resources to lay in supplies of high quality tobaccos, taste and aroma will vary from year to year, even sometimes from month to month. And, if inferior quality is used, the cigars will produce a harsh, rough, musty taste with an unpleasant, penetrating aroma, the kind wives tend to become so vociferous about.

But financial resources are not enough. A manufacturer must also possess the expertise to know good tobacco from bad when he sees it. This comes only from experience. The best tobacco men today have been in the business for decades and travel the world buying leaf stock for their companies. They know whether to accept or reject an offer and they have their particular trusted farmers and processors to whom they return year after year. If, in a given year, one traditional source has had a poor crop, chances are another will make up for it. If not, the knowledgeable and experienced tobacco man will have provided the necessary protection in leaf stock to get his company through to the next crop and enable overlapping one crop to the other for slow integration. Again, this means a lot of money becomes tied up in leaf inventory, but it’s the only way to ensure having the supplies of quality leaf necessary to produce tasty, aromatic cigars consistently.