Ramos has expanded the line substantially since he began working with Suarez in 1995. Besides convincing his father to buy tobacco in advance, he's begun attending cigar dinners and shows in the metropolitan New York area to promote the Havana brand. He recently distributed nearly three days' production from the factory to 600 dinner-goers on Long Island.
"I'm hoping that if we do well, we can open a larger factory. I hope to have tables for 50 rollers." He also expects to open a second retail store, perhaps in New York City. Ramos and a friend, Mike Goldner, designed the Havana's green, red and gold label on Goldner's computer. A local print shop makes up the labels, which were added to the Havana cigar only six months ago. That's one of the business strategies that Ramos has employed. My dad didn't understand that a label identifies a cigar," Ramos says. "Without a label, it's like buying a good car, but you don't know who makes it."
Even with the expansion of business under Ramos, Boquilla's operation is extremely basic. There are a half dozen rolling benches arranged in two rows behind the retail counter. He stores tobacco as it comes from the ship in cardboard barrels. A four-foot pile of Connecticut shade wrapper that Ramos bought in September is aging in the backroom. In March, Boquilla will begin to use the Connecticut shade to make Havana cigars. In the meantime, so that it ferments properly, the pile is turned every 30 days, a chore that takes Suarez and Ramos five hours to complete. Suarez is the only full-time roller.
Five other rollers spend time in the factory during the week when they aren't working elsewhere. A Venezuelan woman, Ada Martinez, puts bands on the cigars and sorts tobacco leaves. The rollers can make up to $1 for each cigar, depending on the time it takes to make and the difficulty. The average wage is about 30 cents a cigar. "A lot of them only come in for a couple hours, but they can roll 50 cigars," Ramos says.
Boquilla's Havana blend is primarily a mix of Dominican and Mexican tobaccos, although Honduran is sometimes used. Havana's maduro wrapper is Dominican-grown, while it's natural wrapper is grown in Mexico. Although he buys tobacco through a Florida broker because Boquilla isn't large enough to deal directly with suppliers in the Caribbean and Mexico, Suarez know that the quality of the tobacco is the most important aspect of a cigar.
"My dad is very meticulous," Ramos says. "If he doesn't like the material he gets, he'll send it back. He looks at a cigar like [he does] a pretty woman. It's very fragile. He has a big love for the cigar." Havana cigars are made in 16 sizes, in both a natural and a maduro wrapper. About 60 percent of our production is in maduro," Ramos says. The cigars generally are priced between $2 and $4, although two sizes, a 5 1/2-inch, 46-gauge Pyramid and a 6-inch, 56-gauge Torpedo, sell for $5 and $7.50, respectively. As is typical in cigar factories, before the wrapper is put on, the cigar bunch is placed in a form and then a hand-operated press to help it take its characteristic shape. "We don't have forms for the Torpedo or the Pyramid, so they are shaped in rolled up newspaper," Ramos says. "It's a lot harder to make those cigars."
The least expensive Havana cigar is the Ninfa, which is a 7-inch, with a 36-gauge, and which sells by the box or $1.80 each. The factory also makes a short-filler Boquilla cigar in four sizes at prices between $1 and $1.40. The company's goal is to make a quarter of a million cigars in 1997. The small amount of success Boquilla has enjoyed in recent years couldn't have happened in Cuba, Suarez believes. Although he longs to be in Cuba's fertile tobacco valleys making cigars, he has no desire to return while Castro is in power. "I would not want to go back there with Castro still there," he says simply.
Suarez doesn't think much about the cigars coming out of Cuba these days. Castro destroyed many of the tobacco fields to plant sugar cane instead, which took hundreds of acres of fertile soil out of tobacco production. And the work ethic of the Cuban people under Castro's dictatorship is such that the quality Of Cuban cigars is spotty at best, he says. "The Cuban people don't care anymore," Suarez says. "They are taking all the short cuts. They aren't aging the tobacco. They aren't taking the time to make good cigars. Cuba has the fame for having the best tobacco and the best cigars, but they are not as good as they used to be."
