 The Mexican Revolution (continued) 
Another man who knows all about aging tobacco - and aging gracefully in the tobacco business - is Alejandro's father, Alberto Turrent IV, current patriarch of both family and company. After an afternoon siesta and cigar break at my hotel overlooking picturesque Lake Catemaco, I met the two for a sunset meeting at their office above the factory. An easygoing, broad-shouldered man with white hair, the senior Turrent is also quite knowledgeable about Mexico's long history in tobacco - only fitting for the caretaker of Mexico's pre-eminent cigar brand. "We started growing tobacco in the 1880s," he stated. "My grandfather exported cigars and tobacco to Europe, but he had to stop for the First and Second World War. After World War II, he began exporting again, and in 1962, after the Cuban Embargo, started selling to the United States. The factory that made Te-Amo started in 1963." Despite its long history, however, Te-Amo is not the first cigar to come from the Turrents. That distinction belongs to El Aguila ("The Eagle"), a long-discontinued brand that actually predated World War I. When Te-Amo debuted in 1964, the intention was to take full advantage of both the opportunity presented by the Embargo and of Americans' curiosity about the land south of the border. "Why did we call it Te-Amo? It was short, easy to remember. It meant nothing to Americans other than that it was Spanish. We used [the image of] bull and bullfighter because that was how Americans perceived Mexico. It was all to identify ourselves as a distinctly Mexican product."
All-Mexican tobacco in the cigars assured that Te-Amo, and all its lesser-known contemporaries, were indeed distinct, and harsh tariffs prohibited Mexican cigar makers from importing any other nation's tobacco to enhance their blends. The situation changed in 1996, when NAFTA and globalization began impacting Mexico's economy, allowing imported tobacco to be used. Predictably, the Turrents were first to seize the opportunity, releasing a cigar called Excelsior to the U.S. market. A casualty of the boom, the brand didn't last, but has been repackaged as the Andrea's line, sold in Mexico and Europe. A more recent launch, the Te-Amo Anniversario series, has been much more successful. With its appealing, dark Habana 2K wrapper, an intriguing blend of Nicaraguan, Dominican, and Mexican filler, and top-notch packaging, the brand is slowly putting Te-Amo and Mexico back on the radar of American cigar enthusiasts. Building on their success, the Turrents launched Te-Amo Cabinet Series, a line boasting extra-fermented Mexican filler and two available wrapper types: Sumatra and Habana 2K. The family's proudest achievement to date may well be the A. Turrent brand - a return to an all-Mexican puro, but with wrapper, filler, and binder all coming from Habana seed. While Alberto Turrent does not see immediate, huge growth in the market, he does see opportunities: "The quality of Sumatra wrapper from Indonesia has been going down," he opined. "We have an opportunity to increase the profile of Sumatra wrapper from Mexico. Meanwhile, with Te-Amo, we are using a popular brand name in the market, and expanding it with different styles. In the past, Macanudo only had a Connecticut wrapper; now we've seen Cameroon and maduro versions of that cigar. It's a good formula to follow." On Mexico's future, he is clear and succinct: "We've been making cigars here since before the embargo. Not many countries can produce one good wrapper leaf, much less two. We believe we have the quality to compete with any other country's cigars." So adamant is this belief among the cigar producers of Mexico that a trade organization was formed for the sole purpose of uniting and promoting the country's cigar industry. The Mexican Association of Cigar Manufacturers, founded in 1995 in the early days of the boom, is a collective of manufacturers in the San Andrés Valley, working toward the common goal of strengthening the Mexican cigar industry. One of the larger member companies, aside from Turrent, is Puros Santa Clara, makers of the Santa Clara and Aromas de San Andrés brands. The scion of another family-owned business whose tobacco industry heritage is rooted in 17th century, pre-Revolution Mexico, Jorge Ortiz Alvarez, the company president and officer of the MACM, began making cigars in 1967. Three decades later, Santa Clara has grown to over 400 employees, including over 50 rollers who turn out 10,000 cigars a day from the factory in San Andrés Tuxtla, a short drive from the Turrent facility. Their cigars - all San Andrés tobacco, except for the recently-introduced Santa Clara Special Edition, with its Ecuadorian wrapper and Dominican presence in the filler blend - are exported to the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia and South America. Pablo Miguels, Santa Clara's Production Manager, led me through the factory while we waited for Mr. Ortiz's contingent to arrive.
"The quality is the main factor," Nancy Hernandez confirmed later, in a meeting at the factory. "We're trying to compete with the major brands sold in the U.S., and in order to do that we've got to get better every day." Hernandez works closely with Ortiz as an export manager for Santa Clara, and speaks with a degree of passion for MACM's goals and mission. "Around 1995, the beginning of the boom, everyone - Cubans, Dominicans, all had the same problem. They produced large quantities of cigars while the quality kept deteriorating. Mexican cigars were attacked for this more than most, and we're just now beginning to recover. The larger companies noticed that [these practices were] killing our brands, and formed the Association to maintain higher quality on Mexican cigars. The aim was for consumers outside of Mexico to recognize these products as consistently good." Several factors seem to attest to the organization's success, including Santa Clara's own reported stronger sales - enough to inspire the company's expansion into the lucrative men's accessory market. A well-equipped workshop down the hall from the rolling room produces not only Santa Clara's own cigar boxes, but premium humidors and desk accessories. The Association has also successfully lobbied the Mexican government to hold the line on tariffs, defeating a proposal to nearly double taxes on domestic tobacco products. The next hurdle is an ongoing push to halt favorable tax treatment to Cuban imports, an effort that has yet to see results, but has further galvanized the Mexican cigar producers to pull together for their mutual survival. As I bade farewell to my hosts at Santa Clara, arms filled with product samples, I noticed soccer trophies proudly displayed on a wall shelf. I had noticed similar ones in the other rolling rooms, sorting rooms, and offices I had visited. Miguels told me that many of the workers at the various San Andrés cigar companies play against each other in a league, and I found the parallel appropriate - friendly competition, in work and in play. And while they may be scoring points against each other on the soccer field, in the farms and factories the goal is a common one: bringing Mexico back to its rightful place among the top cigar nations of the world. SMOKE - Summer 2002   |
