by Mark Bernardo

Entering the town of Enfield, Connecticut, in early autumn, one gets the distinct feeling of being dropped into the middle of a Norman Rockwell painting. As the snaking asphalt of Interstate 91 gives way to tree-lined country roads, with quaint cottage-style houses, leaf-covered lawns, and neighborhood stores, a visitor gets the sense that if classic Americana can exist in microcosm, it is here, in this quiet village nestled in the Connecticut River Valley, just 20 miles north of the brooding insurance towers of Hartford, and a stone’s throw from the Massachusetts border.

Connecticut is renowned for its classic New England character - and among a widening circle of cigar enthusiasts, it is also famed for producing the finest wrapper leaf in the world. Outside that circle, however, the unique, almost mystical qualities of the tobacco land in the north of the Constitution State are still a well-kept secret. I can’t recall how many times an otherwise well-informed dinner companion has said, “Really? They grow tobacco? In Connecticut?”

Those in the know, however, are rightly concerned. Last summer’s damp, rainy weather ushered in an epidemic of Blue Mold, scourge of tobacco-leaf growers, that decimated a significant portion of this year’s crop, and now has the farmers of the Connecticut River Valley battling to preserve not only a livelihood, but a tradition and heritage older and richer than most realize.

Americans forget that their country is a tobacco country,” Hendrik Kelner said with a knowing smile, leaning back in a leather lounge chair. “The first [Colonial] settlement, in Jamestown, Virginia, grew tobacco as its main crop. And as far as I’m concerned, Connecticut grows the best wrapper leaf in the world, bar none.”

With over 30 years of experience in the tobacco business, the last 10 with Davidoff of Geneva, a company whose cigars - the Davidoff line, as well as the Zino, Avo, and Griffins brands - are known for their fine Connecticut shade (and broadleaf) wrappers, Kelner, an industry legend known more familiarly as Henkie, should know better than most. If it is the best wrapper in the world, I asked him, what is it about the small stretch of farmland in New England that makes it so special?

“It’s a combination of the soil, the climate, and the technology,” Kelner answered without hesitation, pointing out the technological leaps in farming tobacco. He went on to acknowledge, however, that this year’s overall crop was 40 percent smaller than last year’s, attributing the drop to a reduced premium cigar market and a particularly ravaging strain of Blue Mold. Kelner, like most who have seen the highs and lows of the industry, remains optimistic, and predicts that the laws of supply and demand will lend even more cachet to the already well-regarded shade wrapper. “Cigars with Connecticut wrappers will become more rare, and as a result, even more special to cigar smokers,” predicted Kelner.

A short drive behind the local high school is the Enfield Shade Tobacco Farm, a 400-acre facility that supplies Connecticut shade wrapper leaf to the tobacco giant Altadis U.S.A., manufacturers of H. Upmann, Montecristo, Don Diego, Romeo y Julieta, and a host of other brands. I walked into the main office to meet with company president Ken Chickosky, and was treated to some down-home hospitality that one would expect more of a family visit than a business meeting, provided with coffee, breakfast, and the hand-rolled Montecristo that would be my traveling companion throughout my tour of the grounds.

Chickosky himself is tall and broad, with the weathered look of a man who’s worked his whole life with his hands, and the booming, barbwire voice of an old cowboy actor. Chickosky is third generation in the tobacco business; his grandfather started farming broadleaf in the late 1800s, and the operation shifted to strictly shade tobacco in the past four years. I asked if the end of the mid-’90s cigar boom had affected business.

“It’s leveled off,” Chickosky acknowledged. “As far as premium cigars go, it’s probably hit the bottom. However, the bottom is still higher than it was four or five years ago. Meanwhile, I’m being told the mass-market, machine-made product is doing very well.” I would later learn that barely 30 percent of any given harvest of Connecticut shade is actually used in hand-rolled cigars - only the best of the best, lending further credence to Kelner’s contention that Connecticut wrapper could be on its way to becoming a rarer and more precious commodity.

As we walked out to begin our tour of the farm, we were joined for the duration of our day by Jean-Paul Reuland of the Indonesian firm Indoco International B.V. Reuland is a silver-haired, soft-spoken agronomist with a relaxed demeanor and, judging by his inquisitiveness and enthusiasm, a burning desire to learn all he could about farming Connecticut shade. Witnessing Reuland and Chickosky in conversation brought to mind two generals comparing strategies - veteran soldiers fighting to ensure that a thousand-year tradition would be secure for the next generation. They would be happy to know that they are not alone in their struggle.

The brochure of the Connecticut Valley Tobacco Historical Society proclaims its dedication “to preserving the history and artifacts of growing cigar tobacco in the Connecticut River Valley.” That such an organization exists speaks volumes about both the challenges facing the area and the passion with which people are meeting those challenges. I spoke with Marion Nielsen, the curator of the Society’s Tobacco Museum, in Windsor, about the social and economic impact of Connecticut shade tobacco farming on the region.

“There are about 2,000 acres being farmed now,” she said. “At one time - the prime years, the 1930s and ‘40s - there were as much as 38,000 acres. At that time the Valley extended all the way into Vermont and New Hampshire. Back then, Connecticut and Massachusetts were primarily agricultural states. When industrial areas starting developing, the farmers were offered good money for their land, and they let it go.”

And what about the ones that are left? Did she expect the farmland to be further reduced?

With a somewhat regretful note in her voice, Nielsen responded, “Most of the farms - all of them, I believe - are privately owned, and have been passed down from generation to generation. It’s at a point now where the present generation doesn’t want to hold on to the land; most of [the next generation] don’t want to take it over because they see it as a business that’s dying out.”

If Chickosky and his contemporaries are members of an endangered species, however, they have no intention of going down without a fight.

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