one Cuban cigar maker seven years ago. Galdieri today employs a total staff of 24, including four Cuban and 10 Dominican cigar-rollers.

This year's production estimate is more than 800,000 hand-rolled cigars, nearly 50% of which will be sold via mail order to tourists who originally strolled by the store, or were referred by friends who did. That's not a lot of production by the standards of factories in Honduras or the Dominican Republic, which can produce tens of millions of hand-rolled cigars annually. But for Galdieri, the output is just about right -- small enough so that he can personally control quality, large enough so that he can order quantities of tobacco a year in advance.

"What I have here would only work in a tourist area like Las Vegas," Galdieri says, "If I opened this same store in L.A. or Chicago, it would be a neighborhood cigar store, where I could probably make a living. But once people walk through my door here, it begins to snowball. Most of my business comes in by word-of-mouth."

Galdieri, 53, got into the cigar business in 1989 after owning a ceramic dental lab in a New Jersey suburb of New York for twenty years. "It was a time to make a change in my life," Galdieri says, "I picked Vegas because I like the heat and I have some friends and relatives here. I came out here with the intention of semi-retiring, but I got caught in a jackpot. I took a job in the Holiday Inn selling time-shares. I worked one day, and I quit. It was too high-pressure and that's not my style."

"I ended up going into a venture selling air conditioners with a guy. I went broke. Then I started selling solar screens door-to-door," he continues.

"A Cuban friend suggested I get into the cigar business. He told me that the cigar business is a sleeping giant. I scraped together enough cash to hire one cigar maker and open a small store near Bally's. At the beginning, there was me, the roller, and a cash register. I'd leave him in the store during the day and I'd go sell solar screens."

At first, Galdieri made 10 different cigars, a number that has grown to 17 today. "I tried to establish a variety so we could hit every personality," Galdieri says.

The Las Vegas Cigar Co. blend is a mixture of tobaccos from the Dominican Republic, Santo Domingo, and Mexico, with either a Mexican or Ecuadoran wrapper, depending on whether the cigar is, respectively, a maduro or natural. Establishing the blend was a hit-and-miss proposition. "We ordered tobacco from all over -- Mexico, Honduras, the DR -- and we just started putting blends together and smoking them," Galdieri says. "Some were too harsh, others too bitter or too bland. It took about a month of smoking different blends before we came up with the blend we have today.

"Number one the blend is not harsh on your throat, and, number two, it's got great aroma. It doesn't burn your nose, and the wrapper I use doesn't have the bitter aftertaste that a lot of cigars leave."

Galdieri has been a cigar smoker since he was 16. "I was always around cigars. I had five uncles who smoked them. I used to smoke Perlitos -- a sun-dried cigar from Brazil. Now, I mostly smoke my own brand, not because it's mine, but because I like the cigar."

Las Vegas Cigars range in size from the Nix, a 5" x 30 ring gauge long-filler named for Galdiere's 12-year-old son, Nick, to the mammoth 9" x 57 ring gauge El Rey. Single cigars at box prices range from $1.30 each for a Nix, to $6.19 for an El Rey.

The company also makes sweetened cigars in each size by applying a mixture of sugar and water to the wrapper after the cigar is made. "I've got customers who won't buy anything but sweets," Galdieri says. Noting that he drinks straight Cuban-style coffee that his rollers drink heavily sweetened, "I can't put a sweet cigar in my

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