The pursuit of great cigars begins with the pursuit of great tobaccos. Nicaragua’s cigar makers prize their country’s jet-black earth and ideal climate as the key to their rising fame.

The drive north from the Nicaraguan cigar-making capital of Estelí starts out smoothly enough on CA-1, Central America’s portion of the Pan-American Highway. Rebuilt throughout Nicaragua following the devastating destruction of Hurricane Mitch in 1998, the two-lane highway is more than the road into tobacco country: it’s an economic lifeline stretching over 1,500 miles from Mexico in the north to Panama City in the south.

Descending into Condega, the highway twists and turns as it clings to the steep mountainside. Beyond the edge are lush tobacco plantations in the valley’s river plain, tobacco curing barns lined up neatly in rows. Continuing on to Ocotal, and leaving the Pan-American behind, yet more farms and barns can be spotted. It is here you catch the notorious road to Jalapa, where the journey to Nicaragua’s most noted and remote tobacco farms slows to a crawl. The narrow dirt road, shared by pedestrians, motorbikes, cattle, and tractors, seems to be under perpetual construction, and several bridges still remain washed out from Mitch’s torrential floods. Jalapa has always been difficult to get to, but for cigar makers, the reward is well worth the trek.

Ask any Nicaraguan cigar maker why this tiny Central American country has achieved hotspot status in recent years and the discussion is guaranteed to turn passionately to the source of every tobacco grower’s pride here: the rich, jet-black soil and ideal climatic conditions that are said to rival Cuba’s best growing areas.

From the Jalapa Valley back to Estelí, such boastful claims are anything but idle chat: just ask any of the numerous Cuban farmers, agronomists, and technicians that can be found working the region’s farms and curing operations, lifelong tobacco workers whose expertise have been tapped in pursuit of the finest tobaccos the land can deliver, and the roll ing of the finest cigars outside of Cuba. Nicaragua’s cigar industry has traditionally maintained close ties with its Cuban counterpart, a trend begun by Nicaraguan’s overthrown Somoza family. Given the close ties, Cuba’s efforts to develop tastier and hardier tobacco strains have a habit of methodically making their way to Nicaragua where - once acclimated to local conditions - they thrive.

While many consider tobacco from Cuba’s Vuelta Abajo region in the province of Pinar de Rio to be the best in the world, Nicaraguan tobaccos - and those from Jalapa in particular - have gained a fervent following of their own. Nicaragua’s tobacco growing regions have successfully yielded top-quality leaf, including fine wrapper, giving birth in recent years to a mini-industry of all-Nicaraguan tobacco cigars - true puros in the tradition of Cuba.

If the buzz surrounding Nicaragua’s rising prominence in the world of premium cigars has shifted into high gear in recent years, the nation - which is only slightly bigger than New York - has over 50 years of tobacco growing and cigar making tradition to thank. The companies that comprise Nicaragua’s cigar industry today range from small to large; from long-time survivors of the nation’s political turmoil to more recent upstarts confident with the country’s newfound stability.

The factory where cigar making first began in Nicaragua, and in fact all of Central America, is the storied home of the Joya de Nicaragua brand, Tobaccos Puros de Nicaragua, S.A.

Established prior to the Cuban revolution, the factory has a well-deserved reputation as an unofficial “Cigar University,” having served as a training ground for countless workers who went on to manage other factories in Estelí, neighboring Central American countries, and beyond. The hands-on expertise among its current employees - some of whom have been with the company as long as 34 years - is unique among cigar makers in Estelí.

Joya de Nicaragua was the earliest Nicaraguan brand to gain widespread notoriety in the United States, and was once the best-known cigar brand in all the Americas.

By the time Nicaraguan economist Alejandro Martinez purchased the company in 1994, the operation had lost much of its sheen, having existed as a government company under the country’s communist Sandinista regime. Unfazed and eager to again bring luster, Martinez re-acquired ownership of the Joya de Nicaragua brand several years ago and set out to rebuild it. Turning to the expertise of longtime employees to recreate the original blend that graced cigar shop humidors in the 1970s, the company last year introduced the notably strong Joya de Nicaragua Antaño 1970, an all-Nicaraguan tobacco cigar.

“It’s very expensive tobacco, but not a very expensive cigar,” explains Martinez, who is content to see the famed factory produce smaller quantities of high quality cigars rather than setting sights on the nearly nine million cigars it once produced annually. “I want to give the consumer a good, strong cigar at a reasonable price, even if that means cutting off the big numbers,” says Martinez. “That’s a sacrifice not too many people are ready to make.”

Jorge Padrón, who oversees the family’s Miami factory, but can also be found in Estelí assisting his father, Jose Orlando, one of the earliest manufacturers to set up camp in Nicaragua.

Jose Orlando Padrón had already been making cigars in Miami’s Little Havana for six years before he established his first factory in Nicaragua in 1970. Padrón, whose tobacco-farming family left Cuba in 1961, was no stranger to Nicaragua, having first visited Jalapa in 1957. He was quite aware of the country’s potential to produce world-class tobaccos, and began to slowly build operations in Estelí.

When Nicaragua fell into war during the 1970s, one of Padrón’s top priorities was protecting his stockpiles of aged tobacco. Recognizing the imminent dangers of the Sandinista Revolution to his business, he elected to spread out his supply among several warehouses in Miami and Honduras. When his factory was ultimately burned in 1978, damage to the overall operation was much less than it might have been, although thousands of cigars were lost. The family continued rolling cigars here until 1985, when the U.S. embargo halted Nicaraguan imports to America. Operations were shifted entirely to Padrón’s Honduras factory, and didn’t return to Estelí until 1990, following free elections. Today, both facilities are in use.

Over the years, the family has invested heavily in the business and its facilities in Estelí, and most of it - about 95% of all the company’s space - has been allocated to the handling, processing, and storage of tobacco. “We have tobacco from all different areas here in Nicaragua,” says Jose’s son Jorge Padrón. “Processing tobacco is the most important part of making great cigars - to get the opportunity to control that ourselves.” The Padróns own their own farm in Jalapa, and contract with farmers in other growing areas, having established long-term relationships to ensure the consistency of its cigar tobacco.

Last summer, the company moved into a new factory just blocks from its old facility. The compound, spread along the Pan-American Highway, consolidates a number of smaller buildings located throughout town, and gives the company much-needed operating space for rolling cigars. Jorge says the new factory could allow a jump in manufacturing capacity, but the family intends to remain focused on its existing brands, which for years has consisted solely of the flagship Padrón brand, with total annual production at about 2 million cigars. It does intend to slowly increase availability of its first permanent new brand, the Padrón 1964 Anniversary Series, which was released last year.

Nestor Plasencia’s family has been growing tobacco in Nicaragua since the 1960s, and is also a major cigar producer.

When Nestor Plasencia’s father Sixto first came to Nicaragua in the 1960s from San Luis, Cuba, it was to continue the family tradition of growing tobacco, which accounts for about half of Plasencia Group’s operations today. Spanning from Estelí to neighboring Honduras, Plasencia grows and processes tobacco for the industry’s top cigar makers both inside and outside of Nicaragua, with facilities in each of the country’s main growing areas, about 700 acres in all. He also operates five cigar factories - two in Nicaragua and three in Honduras - producing mainly brands under contract for other companies.

Plasencia’s Estelí factory, Segovia Cigars, a joint venture with Swiss-based Danneman, is where his best brands are rolled and his company’s best talents showcased. Known locally as the “Cathedral of Cigars,” the facility was designed to mimic the architectural style of Danneman’s Brazilian facility, and even has a central courtyard garden that belies the building’s function as a factory. Segovia produces two of Nicaragua’s more unique brands. Spearheaded by fifth generation grower Nestor Jr., the Plasencia Organica brand is rolled entirely from organic Nicaraguan tobaccos that the company grows and processes without pesticides or chemicals. All tobacco handling, from curing to fermentation to rolling, is entirely separate from regular production. Segovia also makes the Danneman HBPR, made start to finish by a single roller without molds by bunching, pressing, and rolling each stick by hand.

Quality control is the top priority for Fidel Olivas Jarquin, general manager of Latin Cigars S.A. Olivas, a Nicaraguan native who worked for the Joya de Nicaragua factory and managed Plasencia’s facility in Danlí, Honduras, started Latin Cigars in 1996 as a partnership with the Toraño family. It employees 350 people, produces about 50,000 cigars a day, and includes a team of 18 supervisors that oversee a rigorous program of quality tests on each cigar. The partners also operate a larger facility in Honduras, all managed by Fidel and fellow family members Adrian, Jose, and Oscar. The Latin Cigar factories have been producing a number of brands for C.A.O. International for quite some time, and just recently created dedicated cigar operations at both the Honduras and Estelí facilities in conjunction with the Ozgener family. When the transition is complete, C.A.O. Fabrica de Tabaccos will have dedicated staff in both Estelí and in Honduras producing only C.A.O. brands.

Condega native Omar Ortez, manager and founder of Agroindustrial Nicaraguense de Tabaco in Condega, Nicaragua, produces cigars in parntership with Felipe Gregorio.

In 1995, Omar Ortez established Agroindustrial Nicaraguense de Tabaco, located off the beaten trail in the tiny town of Condega, north of Estelí. A partnership with Felipe Gregorio president Philip Wynne, it is a vertically-integrated operation, processing nearly all of its own family-grown raw tobaccos in Jalapa. “Generally speaking, Philip favors stronger cigars,” notes Ortez, who creates the cigars’ blends and has developed such Nicaraguan puros as Felipe Gregorio and Felipe II for Wynne, but has also created softer ones like Petrus. Production at the factory is essentially steady at about 1.75 million cigars annually.

Ortez, a native of Condega, can speak at length about the individual styles of Nicaragua’s tobacco origins. “Each tobacco has distinct characteristics,” Ortez explains. “Esteli leaf is strong, used mostly for filler, but some as wrapper; tobaccos grown in Jalapa are softer and sweeter, used as wrapper and filler. Condega leaf falls somewhere in between in taste.”

In stark contrast is Nicaragua American Tobacco S.A. (NATSA), the largest producer in Estelí at 20 million cigars per year, all made exclusively for Santa Clara Inc. and its retail operation, 800-JR Cigar Inc. The sprawling facility was opened in 1995 by the late Juan Francisco Bermejo, a veteran cigar maker who was a co-founder of the original Joya de Nicaragua factory. Bermejo’s son Juan “Triki” Bermejo Jr. now oversees production of 15 handmade brands including Montecruz, La Finca, Montequilla, José Martí, Mayorga, Remedios, Flor de Farach, and Aristoff.

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