Visitors can buy stogies at their source
Cuba’s Finca Palenque de los Cimarrones gives visitors the complete lowdown on the production of iconic symbols of the country before they literally go up in smoke.
The tobacco plantation — found in Pinar del Rio, the epicentre of Cuban tobacco country — routinely hosts visitors, who can see a tobacco field and enter a structure where host Ariel Arancibia Corrales demonstrates among other things his dexterity in rolling cigars and explaining what makes a great stogie.
Visitors can buy fresh cigars right from their source during their visits.
The great majority of the tobacco produced at Finca Palenque de los Cimarrones is sold to the Cuban government but some is kept for the personal use of farm employees and their friends.
And, reports Arancibia Corrales, some of those employees like to add their own personal touches to stogies they intend to smoke themselves.
Among additions to those cigars might be honey or what’s dubbed “vitamin R” — rum, another product quickly associated with Cuba.
“It’s like a cocktail,” guide Liuba Guedes Fernandez says of some of the creative cigar creations.
Guedes Fernandez says there’s a lot of interest in cigars and tobacco among tourists visiting Cuba, with Cuban cigars having a cachet. Choices include Cohibas, which are at the top of the cigar chain, she notes
However, those visitors often aren’t familiar with the manufacturing process or how involved that process is, she adds.
And Guedes Fernandez says Cubans can take pride in the cigars produced in their homeland.
“Cuba is famous all over the world for our tobacco,” she points out.
