Success came after a hard-fought battle for the Fuente family, who migrated from Cuba to Florida during the Spanish-American War. Their cigar company was established in 1912 in Tampa’s Ybor City. Since then, neither factory fires, the U.S. embargo on Cuba, the Sandinista revolution, or downturns in the cigar market - all of which dealt blows to the beleaguered company - could halt its inevitable growth into an industry leader. Along the way, Carlito has earned the admiration (and in some cases outright envy) of his peers in the D.R. Still, despite the perks of celebrity that festoon his Santiago office, including an array of baseball paraphernalia autographed by his buddy Sammy Sosa, he has not lost touch with his humble roots. He also is determined to give something back to the country that has been most instrumental in that success.

“There is no question I am an American,” Fuente declares. He has set up the Cigar Family Charitable Foundation, which has been involved the past year in some very worthy, high-profile causes in the U.S. as well as the D.R. “The Foundation has actually become a large part of my daily responsibilities,” he says, “and in a sense, a big part of my heart is there. We’ve raised a lot of money for the Twin Towers Fund in New York, for the policemen and firemen. Here in the D.R., we’re building a school, funding medical services, a boys’ and girls’ club. We do a lot of events. We also create cigars that are unique, and donate them to charities as collectibles. It’s inspirational when you create a product that can actually help people.”

It also helps when that product is so universally lauded and desired. The Fuente roster reads like a cigar maven’s Christmas list: The Arturo Fuente and Don Carlos lines; Fuente Hemingway; the entire Ashton line; private labels for Mike’s Cigar, Savinelli, and others; and the aforementioned Opus X. Fuente, however, is quick to point out the advances made not by himself, but by the entire nation. “There was not really a cigar culture here,” he reminisces. “It was more of a tobacco [growing] culture. Then there was this big leap in quality the past few years. It’s come a long, long, way.”

THE RENAISSANCE MEN

Somewhere between the well-known industry icons and the next generation of cigar innovators are the prolific factories - their proprietors largely unheralded outside the industry - that turn out consistently good products for a variety of contractors, many of which also put out signature brands.

Radhames Perez is the owner of Tabacalera Real S.A., and is the prime example of a tobacco industry businessman. “You want strong? You want medium? If people want the cigar, I make it,” he states with a smile, struggling admirably with his English. Perez is most closely associated with Felipe Gregorio, his partner in running the factory, turning out a wide range of styles, from the sweet, mild, candela-wrapped Iguana to the fuller-bodied Frank Sinatra line.

In the same vein are Luis and Sergio Cuevas of Cuevas & Toraño (formerly Cuevas & Hermanos), a small factory in Navarette that since 1997 has produced La Perla Habana, one of the first post-boom cigars recognized as a Dominican powerhouse. In addition to that trendsetting brand, and the Carlos Toraño Dominican Selection (another cigar that scores consistently high in SMOKE’s reviews), Cuevas has been entrusted with the new version of the venerable and much-travelled Dunhill brand. I got a preview glimpse of the new limited release cigars, and marveled at the innovative quality control process: all boxes are numbered individually, and each phase of production is signed off by the person in charge, from rolling to final quality control and packaging. Essentially, a smoker who has any issues with the Dunhill he’s smoking would be able to trace it not just to the factory, but all the way back to the torcedor who rolled it.

Puros de Villa Gonzalez is a name known only to tobacco industry insiders, but anyone who’s ever even seen a cigar display in a drugstore knows the company behind it: Swisher. PVG, however, is where the company’s premium long-filler brands - not its more widely-known short-filler “Sweets” - come from. If you’ve ever enjoyed a MacBeth, Siglo 21, or Bering Hallmark, you’ve tasted the fruits of the 50-year experience of owner Leocadio Pena and his expert hand-rollers.

Jose Blanco of Tabacalera Palma is a relatively young man who brings modern expertise to the tobacco company started by his grandfather in 1942. Blanco (or “Hochi” as he’s known to nearly everyone in the business) revolutionized Palma by bringing in new molds in 1980 to improve the quality level of his cigars. His small company, which kept a low profile throughout the boom, produces many private labels, and is known mostly for the Cibao brand, which comes from the same farm which produces La Flor Dominicana, one of the biggest success stories among the new generation of Dominican cigar companies.

Family is important in the cigar business. Some, like Blanco’s, establish a firm foothold in the land of their birth; others, like the Reyes family, spread far and wide across the spectrum of the tobacco community. Rolando Reyes, Sr., the Cuban expatriate who established the Puros Indios brand in Honduras, is an almost mythic figure amongst that community, but most of the family has been quietly plying the trade for six generations. Augusto Reyes heads up De Los Reyes Cigars, a large factory that turns out the Fittipaldi line, as well as an array of private-label brands for clients like Indian Tabac, Tropical Tobacco, and others. Although he is throwing his hat into the ring with a signature brand of his own, Rey de Reyes (literally, “king of kings”), Augusto seems quite content that the great majority of his cigars will end up adorned with the bands of various other companies. It seems to be a Reyes family trait to trust the work to speak for itself.

THE YOUNG GUNS

Augusto’s brother Emilio, while also meticulous in his craftsmanship - he once worked directly for the Cuban government to supervise quality control - seems more comfortable bringing some long-delayed spotlight to the family name with his brands for CTI Tobacco. CTI (abbreviated from its original name, Consolidated Tobacco Industries, after legal wrangles with Altadis), one of the youngest and fastest-growing companies in the D.R., has at its core a formula reminiscent of a cop-buddy movie: the brash, energetic youngster teaming up with the cagey old veteran.

Kristian Baso, a 29-year-old investment fund manager and longtime cigar lover, met Emilio Reyes in a cigar store. The latter’s dedication and over 41 years’ industry experience convinced Baso that even in this treacherous, post-Boom economy, starting a new cigar company was worth pursuing. “If you look at overall cigar sales before the boom, those sales haven’t decreased,” Baso points out. “Sales have maintained the height they’d grown to. All [the boom] did was create new cigar connoisseurs. I’ve probably looked at 5,000 business plans and ideas, and none of them made as much sense to me, as an investment, than making cigars.”

For Baso, Reyes’s reputation, as well as that of his nephew, Rolando Reyes, Jr., a master of cigar blending who made his name on Puros Indios and others, lent his fledgling company legitimacy. “Nobody wants a rich, snot-nosed kid coming onto the block, thinking he can do it better,” he admits, “but Emilio and Rolando had a passion and respect for the business. The rest of it is marketing, and you need money to do that. The big boys - General, Altadis, Fuente - took the traditional cigar business to the next level. We’re just taking advantage of those same marketing principles. We already knew the quality was there.”

CTI is obviously thinking big. Almost right out of the gate came their flagship cigar: a Dominican puro, with wrapper grown from one of Emilio’s hundreds of acres of farmland. The Reyes DRG - for Dominican Republic Gold - is the pride and joy of both the Reyeses and Baso, and it is the native-grown wrapper that sets it apart. “Growing wrapper in this country is very expensive,” Reyes says. “It is easier to buy it. That is why it’s rare: very few people grow wrapper here, so when they do, they are going to use it. They are not going to sell it to anyone.” CTI grows wrapper solely for the DRG, and given the expansion of their own portfolio - Pirate’s Gold, Reyes Unidos, Flor de Los Reyes, Trader’s Reserve, all incorporating filler from Reyes’s farms - the company has no plans to add private labels to the workload. An expansion of CTI itself, however, is not out of the question. “The sky’s the limit,” Baso says, beaming and lighting up a Reyes DRG.

An even younger company than CTI has a man at the helm who has used what he describes as “Rockefeller tactics” to go from supplier to premium cigar manufacturer. As the end of the cigar boom drove many companies to liquidation, Luis Tomas Mendez bought tobacco inventory and cigar factories for fire-sale prices and began pumping out inexpensive cigars for eager distributors. He reinvested the profits to build his La Caya brand, an optimistic entry into the crowded premium cigar market. Is it going to be an uphill battle, I ask him, to stand out from the pack? “For me, it is a challenge,” he agrees. “I don’t need 100 years, like Leon Jimenes or Fuente. I think when you make a good cigar that smokes well, people will trust you. I don’t see it as competing with anyone. I just see it as doing my part.” Some would say he’s doing more than that: while not yet jumping into the Dominican puro sweepstakes, Mendez is using his vast tobacco resources to create four different wrappers for La Caya: Nicaraguan Habana 2000, Brazilian maduro, Connecticut shade from Ecuador, and Indonesian Java. For U.S. smokers’ widely diverse tastes, it would seem he’s got the bases covered.

Victor Sinclair, a company that has bought Mendez’s tobacco, has upped the ante even more on the American craze for new wrappers. Jose Dominguez, born into a multi-generational tobacco family, had a career as a veterinarian before the cigarmaking bug bit him around 1995, when he started Victor Sinclair with only six employees. (Company legend also has it that he purchased his factory with prize money from his rooster Harry, a renowned champion in the still-popular Dominican sport of cockfighting.) Along with his brother Rafael, Dominguez grew the company swiftly, introducing the Bohemian brand in the U.S. last year, as well as foraying into the flavored cigar market with Honey Delights. The Bohemians’ growing appeal lay in the popularity of their Brazilian maduro and Nicaraguan corojo wrappers. The company’s newest line, Revolution, takes it a step further. All four of the new cigars have double wrappers: the Sidewinder (Brazilian maduro and Brazilian corojo); Predator (Cameroon and Ecuadorian Connecticut); Hellfire (Connecticut and Brazilian maduro); and Hawkeye (Connecticut Shade and Virgin Sun-Grown). The result is a supremely unique smoke with complex nuances. In contrast to many, Dominguez is not one to obsess over crafting a Dominican puro. “A good cigar maker knows how to blend,” he maintains. “Why limit yourself to one country?”

Dominican cigar makers are a diverse lot, but their goals seem fairly consistent: Quesada calls them “noble smokes - cigars where the punch is with a velvet glove rather than a naked fist. The glove leaves a nice feeling, whereas bare knuckles just leave a mark on your face ... and scratches in your throat.” The metaphor is apt: After taking some hits from the boom, the Dominican Republic is getting off the canvas for Round Two ... and for some, the gloves are coming off.