Cigars With Style
(cont.)Dozens of huge burlap-wrapped bales of tobacco - from Brazil, the Canary Islands, Honduras, Indonesia and Mexico - rest on flats on the floor, awaiting use. At the back of the large, open room, several men and women work with black-stained fingers, processing the leaves, preparing them for the maestros who will roll them into cigars. The cigar makers have work stations set up in rows under low fluorescent lamps. Meringue, reggae and other island musics pumps out a syncopated beat over a small sound system, generating the rhythms to which the maestros work. (There's an occasional surprise among the collection of CDs, from the glam-rock of Space Hogs to the psychedelia of Jimi Hendrix; Sharruf explains that some of the younger Cubans prefer rock to traditional island beats.) A few of the maestros smoke cigars, some cigarettes, some not at all.
One of the maestros, Pedro, is also an artist. He has drawn gentle caricatures of everyone on brown craft paper, and posted them at their stations. Except for one woman, the makers are all men, and all of them in the factory are very experienced. "All maestros," Sharruf says, "none with less than 15 years experience." Further back are stations of women in the support functions, stripping wrapper tobacco, putting bands on complete cigars, boxing them. The makers are split between Cubans and Dominicans. One man has a small Cuban flag at his station.
Sharruf knows there's more to great cigars than the tobacco, so he takes good care of his cigar makers. "We pay higher than anybody in the US for cigar makers," he insists. "Some of our employees go back to our previous, separate companies. We pay the highest, and all health, medical and dental insurance, if they want it. Some of our guys average $1,000 to $1,500 per week and they still bitch and moan."
Each maker usually does all of his own work from start to finish on every cigar, and each averages about 400 cigars per day. The maestros work quickly and efficiently, with little conversation, though they are seated close to one another. Some sport baseball caps, and most wear jeans and T-shirts; one young man wears a Marlboro shirt. Nicolai, a Cuban, is responsible for the Maestro Torpedo, an unusually large stogie, using a special blend. "Full flavor, full body, only in Maduro wrappers," Sharruf explains.
The Cuban Cigar Factory sold close to a million cigars in its first year, Sharruf says, and this year he expects to sell between three and four million. The CCF line features five different cigars: the Traditionales; the Torpedo; La Palma de Oro, made on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands ("An unbelievable cigar," Sharruf comments); and two from Mexico: the Santo Diego ("We're saintly cigar makers, so we make a saintly cigar") and the Plantation Reserve, which they sell in bulk, and as private-label orders. The cigars retail from $10 or more.
But the biggest news at CCF is their latest project, now in the R&D stage: growing tobacco using hydroponics. One thousand square feet of the warehouse have been set aside and sealed off, with grow lights and controlled temperature and humidity, for this experiment. "We grow Connecticut Shade Wrapper, and we also grow a Cuban-seed tobacco. We can match the exact soil contents and weather conditions of Cuba," Sharruf claims. The sealed chamber resembles nothing so much as an underground marijuana growing operation, a comparison that elicits chuckles from Sharruf. "We trip people out, we do shit most people wouldn't think of doing," Sharruf cackles.
"Hydroponics is top quality for fruits and flowers, so we thought we'd experiment with tobacco," Sharruf explains. SMOKE is the first to see this experiment. Just now, after one year of research and development, Cuban Cigar is realizing its first crop. The 150 plants, now thigh-high, will eventually grow all the way up to the lights, a height of five to six feet. Sharruf promises to soon have some cigars out using this special tobacco, but cautions that they will be expensive.
"I anticipate the finest-tasting cigar in the world," boasts Sharruf. "We'll get a beautiful, golden-colored wrapper that tastes excellent. We'll mix it with Canary tobacco, grown from seeds from plants inside a volcano. We're taking the best seeds, growing them to better quality than possible in dirt."
Those new cigars and the rest of CCF's line are sold in, among other outlets, six dozen country clubs, and a pair of CCF retail stores in the San Diego area, just a couple of blocks from the warehouse. We walk through the gaslamp area, where there's lots of construction on a warm, but blustery day. Sharruf is looking for new locations, and will soon open a store in Laguna Beach. The Beverly Center in trendy West Hollywood also wants CCF to open a store.
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