José Seijas, Vice President and General Manager of Altadis U.S.A.'s Tabacalera de Garcia factory in La Romana, maintains that the quality of Dominican cigars is known around the world. Spain is one of the largest consumers of Cuban cigars, yet Dominicans are making inroads in that market. Seijas adds that recently he was in the country and talking about his Vega Fina line - which is a big seller in Spain for Altadis U.S.A. - and became both proud and a little embarrassed when his audience stopped him and said they already knew Vega Fina was a brand they could trust. Seijas says his factory in La Romana has been working on some Saturdays and Sundays this year to catch up on back orders, with most of those coming from Spain.

Henke Kelner - the president of ProCigar and of Tabadom Holdings, which makes Davidoff among other brands - says his production is up about 20 percent from last year. But Kelner explains that last year inventories for Davidoff were drawn down prior to the implementation of the State Children's Health Insurance Program of SCHIP tax and now the factory is working to rebuild them. As for the current tobacco, Kelner says the farmers who planted at the right time have a beautiful crop. The leaves are clean, healthy, and stronger than normal because it was a dryer season. Some of the rains came during the ProCigar Festival in the third week of February, but by that time almost all the tobacco had been harvested. Kelner says when he uses the current crop in 2012 or 2013 he knows it will be stronger and therefore will need to rebalance his blends to maintain the taste.

Attendees tour a tobacco barn at General Cigar Company's farm in Mao.

During the factory tours at the ProCigar festival, it was obvious that no one was resting on their laurels. At General Cigar, lots of moving was going on as the company consolidated its tobacco processing into its own building. The company was able to take an empty shell building in the free zone and design the areas specifically for tobacco. That move freed up space in the main General building which now houses the El Credito factory. General C.O.O. Dan Carr says, "We've come together through a bunch of acquisitions so we tried to evaluate where we are today as to how to optimize work flow and processes." Having all the rolling in one building simplifies General's manufacturing and saves space as the company no longer needs two separate packaging facilities. As the El Credito factory made its move, which was completed in March, it was still busy working on the new La Gloria Cubana called Artesanos de Tabaqueros which sports a dual Connecticut shade and an Ecuador Sumatra wrapper. The blend was developed by cigar master Benji Menendez and his apprentice Rick Rodriguez along with General Manager Yuri Guillen and brand manager Michael Giannini. The Arestanos de Tabaqueros, released in early April, uses proprietary five-year-old Dominican and Honduran tobaccos for the filler and binder. The use of a Connecticut shade wrapper and Honduran tobaccos are a first for the La Gloria line.

It seemed most of the factories were working on new products with exciting new tobaccos. As if to underline the increasing quality of Dominican tobaccos, Nicaraguan cigarmakers José "Pepin" Garcia and son Jaime were in Santiago during part of the festival just to look at and buy some of the tobaccos from the Dominican and other regions. Pepin became intrigued with Dominican tobacco at a trade show several years ago when La Aurora's José Blanco gave him a few leaves of his company's barrel aged tobacco and Pepin used it in a blend and liked the way the tobacco harmonized. This year, Pepin finished developing the new Nestor Miranda Collection Dominicano, which uses a wrapper leaf from La Aurora, but made in the My Father factory in Estelí, Nicaragua. The Dominicano uses the same type of corojo wrapper that La Aurora grew for its highly popular and limited production Cien Años line over Nicaraguan binder and filler.

La Aurora, on the other hand, is adding aged Nicaraguan tobacco to the filler of its newest cigar - La Aurora 107. During the ProCigar festival, master blender José Blanco again gave his seminar on tobaccos although this time he changed things up because in the audience were Drew Estate's Jonathan Drew, Steve Saka, and Jessi Flores. The Drew Estate crew was in for the festival (along with Janny Garcia - Pepin's daughter) to show support since many Dominican cigarmakers went to Nicaragua's first festival in December. Usually, José has audience members smoke four components of a specific cigar. This time, he used a few of the components for the new cigar, but also threw in a ringer - the Dominican tobacco Chago Diaz - that confounded even the experts. Adding many jokes to his informative presentation, Blanco then offered an unbanded robusto for everyone to taste. While not named specifically, signs in the factory and t-shirt Jose wore strongly hinted it was the new La Aurora 107. The cigar was officially announced a month later and began shipping in April. The concept for the cigar was to be full bodied and complex - using an Ecuador Sumatran wrapper with six-year-old Dominican binder and Dominican and Nicaraguan fillers - for a lower price point of $6 to $8 plus local taxes.

Kelner's Tabadom has spent the last couple years developing the new Davidoff Puro D'Oro, which was released in late April. For a long time, Kelner felt Dominican tobacco was best suited for binder and filler. But agronomist Manuel Perlata had been working on a special hybrid Dominican wrapper leaf in a new growing area. With a farm in Yamasá, north of Santo Domingo, Perlata and Kelner carefully shepherded and cultivated the leaf, which is a new hybrid exclusive to Davidoff. (Most of the tobacco growing area in the Dominican Republic is near or around Santiago. Yamasá is located southwest of Bonao - home of the Chateau de la Fuente - but it is not easily reached. There is no cut across to Yamasá, so from Santiago you need to go into Santo Domingo then head back north for a driving time of two - three hours, making the operation more expensive.) But Kelner feels the effort was worth it. The new Puro D'Oro is completely Dominican - wrapper, binder, and filler and marks a departure from most Davidoffs. The Puro D'Oro is reminiscent of some of the company's limited editions in that it is a fuller bodied smoke with great complexity. Kelner gave away samples to those ProCigar participants who attended the Davidoff tour.

Family patriarch Manuel Quesada (center), with members of his "new generation" of cigar makers or "Q5" for fifth generation (left to right): Raquel Quesada, Esther Quesada, Hostos Fernandez, Manuel Quesada, Patricia Quesada, and Manuel "Blondie" Bermudez.

At Matasa, the new generation of cigarmakers known as "Q5" for the fifth generation Quesadas, spent six months working on a new blend that was unveiled at the festival. Their first collaborative effort debuted last year when patriarch Manuel Quesada turned the limited commemorative cigar marking Matasa's 35th anniversary over to the "young ones" as he calls them. Q5 is composed of his daughters Patricia and Raquel, niece Esther, and nephews Hostos, José "Blondie" Manuel, and Terence. The first thing the six members of the Q5 team decided was use their own family name - Quesada - for the anniversary cigar, rather than name the cigar after the factory. The resulting cigar - Quesada 35th - was much stronger than most of the traditional Matasa offerings and used a new Arapiraca wrapper grown in Ecuador for the box-pressed cigar. The limited edition anniversary release was a hit at the cigar industry's annual IPCPR convention last year in New Orleans and quickly sold out. As soon as the trade show was over, the group began working on a new line of cigars that would continue the Quesada brand. Raquel Quesada, the blender in the group, began playing with tobaccos for the new cigar. Terence and Hostos remember smoking a lot of different blends throughout the fall season. The pressure was on Raquel to top the 35th anniversary cigar, and slowly all six began to agree on a blend. But the biggest hurdle remained...the name. Finally, in January, Esther came up with the name Tributo-a tribute to those who are no longer with the Quesadas.

Most families have dealt with loss, but for the Quesadas they have had more than their share. Manuel's father, Manolin, who inspired both his son and the "young ones" with the love of tobacco, passed away in 1997 after returning from a full day's work at the factory. But the biggest tragedy happened in April 2002 when Manuel's brother Alvaro, his nephew Alvarito, and right hand man and best friend Julio Fajarado were killed in a plane crash. Not only was the tragedy personal, but it also took three important people from the company. Manuel turned to his daughters, niece, and nephews to help. To memorialize those who were now gone, portraits were commissioned of Manolin, Alvaro, Alvarito, and Julio, but those paintings remained packed away because it was too painful for the Quesadas to see them. Esther's idea to commemorate the four was especially important since it was her father and brother who died in the crash. Manuel said since it was Esther's idea, they would do it.

Making this blend a tribute put even more pressure on Raquel, who kept tweaking the blend to the point that two weeks before this year's festival, she decided to change the wrapper. The change was met with unanimous approval. The wrapper was another new hybrid grown in Ecuador. It has four parents: Habana Vuelta Arriba, Corojo, Habanos 2000, and Sumatra. The binder is Honduran from Jamastran with Nicaraguan and Dominican ligero fillers. It most likely is the strongest cigar ever produced by Matasa and [was scheduled] to reach store shelves in May.

During the festival, the Quesadas gave tours of their factory, but word on the new cigar line didn't come until the final day. On Friday, before a crowd of festival attendees, their family, and the extended family of the workers in the factory, Patricia Quesada - the spokesperson for the group - barely contained her feelings through her speech, letting everyone know about Tributo, the history of the four being honored, and finally the sizes: Manolin, 6 1/2 x 60; Alvaro, a 6 x 52 belicoso; Julio, a 5 x 50; and Alvarito a 4 1/2 x 40. The emotion was palpable when the Quesadas ended the event by unveiling the portraits of the four, finally bringing them out from their crates and into the open and proposing a toast to all who have lost loved ones. The grief they felt was mixed with joy for the hard work done on the new Quesada line.

This year, for the first time, the festival produced a unique cigar of its own. Each of the six member companies donated aged tobaccos ranging from eight to 16 years old. The tobaccos were blended by Henke Kelner and the cigar was given out during the Thursday night "White Dinner" at the Monumento a los Héros de la Restoratión in the center of Santiago. In addition, 100 of these special cigars were part of the auctions at the festival, which raised over $20,000 for Haitian relief and $40,000 for local Dominican charities.

Next year's ProCigar Festival may have some new additions and tours as the group has changed its bylaws to allow new members into the organization. But one thing will remain the same, the number of attendees capped at about 200. Manuel Quesada, ProCigar's vice president, says they want to keep the festival intimate so that all who attend can personally interact with the cigarmakers during the tours, the meals and the parties.