SMOKE: This is quite a busy year for you with lots of changes.

LEON: Yes. Phillip Morris will be staying in this location to continue the manufacturing of the cigarettes and we will be moving the La Aurora factory to a location about 10 minutes from here. Right now we have this location and warehouses across Santiago for our tobacco. In the new facility we will be able to keep the tobacco with the factory. It will cut down our costs of transportation. But my biggest challenge is to move this factory within four to five months, while keeping the factory running.

SMOKE: The replica of the original La Aurora factory is located next to the Leon Museum, will it be moving as well?

LEON: No. We will continue to keep the Preferido factory here. It is open to the public and we think it is important for people to be able to come and see how our Preferidos are made.

Unlike the rest of our factory where rollers work in teams, for the Preferidos one roller brings the cigar from the blending to the bunching to the final wrapper addition. They are our best rollers, rolling the shape that began our company. A perfecto.

SMOKE: Your Cien Años cigar (100 Años) has been very well received and rated. Is this the last year for it?

LEON: We will be shipping the final installment of Cien Años between March and May of this year. It will be the final 100,000 cigars, about 4,000 boxes. The highest amounts are belicosos and robustos; the lowest amounts are coronas and Churchills. We began working on the Cien Años in 1995 when my father said he wanted a special cigar to mark our 100th year in the cigar making business. I began to put away about 60–70 bales of tobacco that year and every year since to make a truly great cigar with aged tobacco. In 1998, we started the process of evaluating different seeds from Cuba. Then after the first crop—it was a very small crop—we decided to go with a true Cuban-seed corojo in the 1998–99 crop that we started to grow.

SMOKE: Was it easy to find that blend?

LEON: No, not at all. Some cigars like the 1495 were pretty easy. We knew we wanted a strong cigar with great taste for the 1495. We got that right in three blends using the Ecuadorian Sumatra wrapper. The Cien Años took us more than 40 blends to do it. We knew we wanted to make a cigar that was medium to full body, but was not too strong. Yet we wanted full flavor. We wanted the true Cuban corojo wrapper and the problem with corojo is that it is very difficult to blend. It does not blend well with a lot of tobaccos. You can have the theory and then the practice. You think this is going to be a great blend but it turns out to be unbalanced or one-sided and simply not that good. The problem is not all the tobaccos harmonize. Sometimes you have tobaccos that simply do not get along with others and true corojo is one of those which is why it took so long. One tobacco that does harmonize with everything is Cameroon and most of the times Brazilian Mata Fina.

SMOKE: And Cameroon is what you are using on the Leon Jimenes 20th anniversary robusto?

LEON: Yes. We also use it on our one of our Preferido lines, as well as on our Don Fernando.

SMOKE: The Don Fernando is made for your father?

LEON: Yes, we make them in batches of 3,000 at a time for him. We have been accumulating them. Some have been sitting here for two years. It is not a cigar that we will release commercially because it is made for him. It all depends on how my father smokes or gives away. What ever is left over we sell. So it is very limited production and I think we should maintain that.

SMOKE: But the 20th Anniversary robusto is similar, thought not exact in taste. Is that a one-time deal?

LEON: No. While the 20th anniversary Leon Jimenes will end this year, it will become the Leon Jimenes 300 series line. In addition to the current robusto, we will be adding coronas, belicosos, and Churchills. We will debut them at this year’s RTDA. The 300 comes from the number of days we age the cigars before releasing them.

SMOKE: What else are you working on?

LEON: Late last year, we had a meeting where I said I wanted to focus on premium and super premium cigars. We have had excellent success with the limited Cien Años and as I have said this will be the last year for it. But anytime you make a cigar, be it the Cien Años or even a private label, you have good tobacco left over…extra bales of wrapper, binder and filler in every kind of tobacco. For eight years or 10 years, we’ve had inventory of four bales here, 20 bales there. We have excellent aged tobacco but in limited quantity. So what are you going to do with it? Creating a premium limited run cigar I think is a very good way out for us. Once the old bales are gone the cigar is gone. It works well for the retailer, the smoker and us. Again, with the Cien Años, we still have aged tobacco left over from it. When we narrowed down the blends to pick the winner, we still have the second place one sitting there. It is a little stronger than the current Cien Años. So next year in 2008, we will see what we will do with the blend. We may keep the blend the same or use the other one but the same box, same bands will be gone. Whoever has a box of the Cien Años has the real McCoy. It was one time deal and we’ve kept our word on that.

SMOKE: How do you view cigar smokers today?

LEON: Overall smokers are better informed today than ever before. The primary reasons are magazines and the internet. There is a lot of information out there and smokers, retailers, and sales representatives do their homework. Unfortunately, some of the information out there is just not right. For example: many people see a dark wrapper believe it is maduro. But that is not the case all the time. You can have a very, very dark wrapper—that wrapper can be oscuro, which means dark. You also can have a lighter version of that same wrapper and it can be maduro. Maduro is just a natural fermentation process that you do to the leaves to make it maduro or ripe. You can have a top priming and you ferment it correctly and it is aged and it can become very dark but it is not necessarily maduro. Maduro and oscuro are two different things. Oscuro is simply the color; maduro brings a sweetness to the tobacco depending upon the process you use to get to the ripe maduro grade you are looking for.

SMOKE: Are there other misconceptions?

LEON: Yes, people believe mild cigars have no taste. Perhaps some are that way, but why would I want to smoke a mild cigar that has no taste or a full-bodied cigar that is only strong. I think it was a fad for a while where some companies were simply making strong cigars and you have some guys who really like very, very strong cigars which personally it not my cup of tea. I prefer medium to full body but full flavor. I will take any day of the week flavor over strength. But I also think people confuse the two sometimes. Lets say that a smoker has a tolerance scale of 1 to 10. Take somebody who is used to smoking very mild cigars. You give him a full-bodied cigar he is going to say it is a bad cigar. But it is not a bad cigar, it is just that his palate or tolerance scale is a 4 and anything over that is not going to suit him. I could go to the factory at 7 o’clock and smoke a full-bodied cigar and it won’t mean anything. On the other hand I know people who will not smoke even a mild cigar after they have had 16-ounce T-bone steak. A lot of people tend to confuse body with flavor.

You can have a good medium body cigar with full flavor and people will think it is a strong cigar but it is just a lot of flavor and complexity going on. The Cien Años is medium to full bodied with full flavor and it is very complex. To me, if the cigar is good but it doesn’t change during the smoke, then it doesn’t interest me. I like a cigar to change three or four times during the smoke. The prime example of that is a 1495 especially the corona size of that. I think if you really want to know about what complexity is in a cigar smoke a 1495 corona.

SMOKE: Why the corona?

LEON: Well, the corona is my favorite size. I think it is the best size to try a new blend and to smoke. Corona is a size where the balance of the wrapper, filler and binder all come together. And you have to remember that in a thinner cigar, you are smoking more wrapper compared to the filler and binder. In the 1495, for example, the Ecuador- Sumatra wrapper adds a lot of earthiness but yet it has a lot of flavor to it and is very unique. Another reason I prefer coronas is the time of the smoke. You do not have to spend an hour or more to smoke it. It is just the perfect time.

SMOKE: So what is the best cigar?