HISTORY OF
CHRISTENED JOSÉ GARCÍA, PEPIN
CUBAN YEARS
Don Pepin began his life with tobacco in December 1961 at the age of 11 when he began working in a factory in Báez owned by an uncle. In March 1963, he began working at the Félix Rodríguez export cigar factory in Báez where he worked until he emigrated to Nicaragua in 2001. He spent thirty years in Cuba developing his skills as a torcedor (cigar roller) and blender, earned numerous accolades for his blending abilities and achieved the highest ranking possible as a cigar roller, Class 8 (Master). Among the awards he won was the Productivity Prize for rolling 320 Julietas (a vitola of 7 x 48 in size) in four hours. The Cuban press often compared the speed and dexterity of his rolling to that of a magician. He is also a Tabaquero Maestro (Master Blender), and was also a “teacher of teachers” in the arts of blending and rolling cigars.
He helped blend cigars such as Cohiba, Partagas, and Montecristo. During the 1990s, he was in charge of Quality Assurance for the Cohiba brand, and was also a consultant to several Cuban cigar makers. Also during the 1990s, he was accounted Cuba's most productive master roller.
AFTER CUBA
He left Cuba in 2001, going first to Nicaragua, then he went to Miami, Florida but soon established his own company and factory. The company, El Rey de los Habanos, Inc. was begun in June 2002, but was not formally incorporated until December of that year. He is currently the President, and his daughter Janny is the treasurer. The corporate offices are at 1120 SW 8th St, Miami, Florida.
CIGARS
In the short time he has been on his own, Pepin Garcia has moved from a relative unknown to a major name in the "boutique" brand arena. In addition to his own brands, he has blended and makes several others for various companies. His skill as a master roller has often been recognized. Pete Johnson said that his "unusually adept skill is evidenced by the fine construction of the cigar". By 2007, his reputation as a superior cigar maker had grown and he was tapped to create and manufacture a completely new brand (San Cristobal) for a major premium cigar company, Ashton Distributors, Inc.
The first brand Pepin made on his own was Tatuaje for Pete Johnson, and after this brand received high ratings in Cigar Aficionado magazine, Pepin was suddenly in great demand and many people wanted a Don Pepin brand. The tiny Miami factory was unable to keep up with the growing demand, and it became necessary to open a second factory, Tabacalera Cubana, in Estelí, Nicaragua.
Don Pepin’s goal is to re-create the Cuban style as closely as possible without using Cuban tobacco. He has found that Nicaraguan tobaccos render the flavor closest to the Habanos he has in mind, although other tobaccos are used as wrappers from time to time, notably Ecuadoran grown Connecticut shade. His cigars are not for everyone, as they are medium- to full-bodied and can pack quite a punch.
All of the cigars made at his factories are made in the Cuban style and are finished with a triple cap. In addition, every box is marked with the date of manufacture, a practice which is beginning to gain favor outside of Cuba, where it has always been done.
THE EL REY DE LOS HABANOS FACTORY
The El Rey de los Habanos factory, the first cigar factory established by Pepin, shares the address of the corporate headquarters in Little Havana at 1120-1124 SW 8th St., Miami. The factory was started by Don Pepin in 2002. The factory manufactures not only Pepin's own brands, but several brands for major clients and house brands for various cigar stores. The factory currently employs 12 rollers, all Class 8 (Master), and they can turn out about 800,000 cigars per year.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
HISTORY OF OLIVA CIGAR CO.
Oliva Cigar Co. the manufacturer of several brands of cigars primarily grown and produced in Nicaragua and sold worldwide. The family-owned company traces its roots to patriarch Melanio Oliva, who began growing tobacco in Pinar del Río, Cuba in 1886. In 1964, in the aftermath of the 1959 Cuban Revolution, Melanio's grandson Gilberto Oliva emigrated with his family to Spain before eventually moving to Nicaragua and reentering the tobacco business. In 1995 Gilberto and his son, Gilberto Jr., launched the "Gilberto Oliva" brand — a label which evolved into today's Oliva. The company is based today in Miami Lakes, Florida.
FORERUNNERS
Forerunners
The family-owned Tabacalera Oliva Tabolisa, known in the United States as the Oliva Cigar Co., traces its roots back to Melanio Oliva, who first began to produce tobacco in Pinar del Rio, Cuba in 1886. The farm was continued by his son, Hipolito Oliva, who took over the growing operation during the 1920s and continued the work for several decades.
The tobacco growing business was assumed by Hipolito's son, Gilberto Oliva Sr., who continued until the 1959 Revolution, at which time he ended his career as a grower and began working as a tobacco broker. This job took Gilberto Oliva to various countries as a buyer and eased his decision to emigrate from his native land for Spain in 1964 and from there to Nicaragua.
EMIGRATION
After working for others, Gilberto Senior began growing tobacco on his own in 1969. For Oliva, no other locale compared with Nicaragua for the production of potent Cuban-style tobacco: "Nothing compares to Cuba like Nicaragua," Gilberto Senior later declared. "Northern Nicaragua enjoys all the natural blessings for great Habano."
Gilberto Oliva Sr. had four children, the last of which, José Oliva, was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey in 1973 because the Olivas wanted an American-born child.
He continued to farm tobacco in Nicaragua for a decade, but was forced to leave the country in 1979 as a result of the Sandinista revolution. Gilberto Senior spent the next six years growing tobacco in Honduras, Mexico, Panama, and the Philippines before returning to Nicaragua in 1995. Upon his return, Gilberto Senior also moved into the world of cigar manufacturing.
ESTABLISHMENT
The "Gilberto Oliva" brand was launched in 1995 with Gilberto Oliva Sr. initially making use of one of Plasencia's Honduran factories for his production. The cigars initially were composed of fillers from the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua, Dominican binder, and wrappergrown in Ecuador from Connecticut seed.
The following year the brand name was shortened to "Oliva."
Oliva did not achieve rapid success, but the company nevertheless managed to survive the shakeout of the numerous cigar-making startup companies which emerged in the 1990s. The cigar market grew rapidly in 1995 and 1996, but by 1997 the established giants of the industry had reacted to the increase in demand, forcing many underfinanced upstarts to fall by the wayside.
Oliva's proverbial ace in the hole proved to be the ample stock of tobacco which Gilberto Senior had himself produced and which was aging in storage in Nicaragua. For the next year and a half, this Nicaraguan-grown stock tided over the brand's production needs. The manufacture of spicy Nicaraguan-grown "puros," initially undertaken for financial reasons due to the down market, had the unintended side effect of improving the quality of the brand, thereby cementing its position in the marketplace.
As one writer has noted
"It pushed the family closer to self-sufficiency and gave it a product that was embraced by the cigar cognoscenti in the United States. The world was falling in love with Nicaraguan tobacco, and Oliva had it to spare."
DEVELOPMENT
Oliva opened up a new facility in Estelí in July 2003, replacing a smaller factory there.
By 2005, Oliva Cigar Co. was producing 6 million cigars a year and expanding its operations rapidly. About 90% of the company's production was in Oliva-branded product. It was at that time the second largest grower of tobacco in Nicaragua. Within a period of just four years, the company managed to more than double its output, producing 13 million cigars for the market in 2009. The brand uses tobacco grown by the company itself in Estelí, Condega, Jalapa, and Somoto, Nicaragua.
The brand's flagship is the Oliva Serie V, a cigar launched in 2006 which was named to Cigar Aficionado magazine's list of the Best Cigars of 2008. In addition to its array of Oliva-branded products, the company also makes a line of squat, thick cigars bearing the brand-name "NUb."
The brand's premiere products are produced in a 60,000-square-foot (5,600 m2) rolling facility located in Estelí, Nicaragua, capable of producing 50,000 cigars a day. Lower-end products are manufactured in a smaller facility located in Danlí, Honduras and transshipped to Nicaragua for final export. Some 350 rollers were employed in the Estelí facility in 2010.
Oliva also makes cigars for other companies under contract, such as the Savinelli Liga Especial and the Savinelli Special Selection 2005.
COMPANY TODAY
Oliva Cigar Family has been acquired by J. Cortes Cigars, as of Summer 2016.
The four Oliva siblings, the great-grandchildren of Melanio Oliva, remain actively involved in the family brand. Gilberto Junior runs the Nicaraguan leaf growing operation and creates blends, Carlos oversees production, Jeannie runs the office in Miami Lakes, and José directs sales.
The company employs a sales force of 18 people, who sell Oliva products in 18 countries. Approximately 95% of Oliva's sales are made to the American market.
In 2011, Oliva Cigar Co. joined forces with Padilla as part of a project called Studio Tobac. As part of this venture Oliva was contracted by Padilla to manufacture its "Studio Tobac Special Edition" figurado. Oliva also manufactures the Nica Libre "Potencia" under contract by internet cigar retailer Meier and Dutch.
Oliva Cigar Co. is not to be confused with the Oliva Tobacco Co. of Tampa, Florida, an important tobacco grower which supplies a number of leading brands, or with the long-established brand Oliveros.
Oliva Cigar Co. brands
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
CIGAR ANATOMY
WHAT IS WRAPPER
Wrapper
A cigar's outermost layer, or wrapper (Spanish: capa), is the most expensive component of a cigar. The wrapper determines much of the cigar's character and flavor, and as such its color is often used to describe the cigar as a whole. Wrappers are frequently grown underneath huge canopies made of gauze so as to diffuse direct sunlight and are fermented separately from other rougher cigar components, with a view to the production of a thinly-veined, smooth, supple leaf.
Wrapper tobacco produced without the gauze canopies under which "shade grown" leaf is grown, generally more coarse in texture and stronger in flavor, is commonly known as "sun grown." A number of different countries are used for the production of wrapper tobacco, including Cuba, Ecuador, Indonesia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Brazil, Mexico, Cameroon, and the United States.
While dozens of minor wrapper shades have been touted by manufacturers, the seven most common classifications are as follows, ranging from lightest to darkest:
BINDER
Binder
Beneath the wrapper is a small bunch of "filler" leaves bound together inside of a leaf called a "binder" (Spanish: capote). Binder leaf is typically the sun-saturated leaf from the top part of a tobacco plant and is selected for its elasticity and durability in the rolling process. Unlike wrapper leaf, which must be uniform in appearance and smooth in texture, binder leaf may show evidence of physical blemishes or lack uniform coloration. Binder leaf is generally considerably thicker and more hardy than the wrapper leaf surrounding it.
FILLER
Filler
"Long filler" inside a hand-rolled cigar (slightly crumbled during cutting)
The bulk of a cigar is "filler" — a bound bunch of tobacco leaves. These leaves are folded by hand to allow air passageways down the length of the cigar, through which smoke is drawn after the cigar is lit.A cigar rolled with insufficient air passage is referred to by a smoker as "too tight"; one with excessive airflow creating an excessively fast, hot burn is regarded as "too loose." Considerable skill and dexterity on the part of the cigar roller is needed to avoid these opposing pitfalls — a primary factor in the superiority of hand-rolled cigars over their machine-made counterparts.
By blending various varieties of filler tobacco, cigar makers create distinctive strength and flavor profiles for their various branded products. In general, fatter cigars hold more filler leaves, allowing a greater potential for the creation of complex flavors. In addition to the variety of tobacco employed, the country of origin can be one important determinant of taste, with different growing environments producing distinctive flavors.
Short filler
The fermentation and aging process adds to this variety, as does the particular part of the tobacco plant harvested, with bottom leaves (Spanish: volado) having a mild flavor and burning easily, middle leaves (Spanish: seco) having a somewhat stronger flavor, with potent and spicy ligero leaves taken from the sun-drenched top of the plant. When used, ligero is always folded into the middle of the filler bunch due to its slow-burning characteristics.
If full leaves are used as filler, a cigar is said to be composed of "long filler." Cigars made from smaller bits of leaf, including many machine-made cigars, are said to be made of "short filler."
World's largest cigar at the Tobacco and Matchstick Museum in Skansen, Stockholm, Sweden
If a cigar is completely constructed (filler, binder, and wrapper) of tobacco produced in only one country, it is referred to in the cigar industry as a "puro," from the Spanish word for "pure."
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Don’t miss out on our latest announcements or any of our exciting media coverage.
THING TO KNOW
DID YOU KNOW ?
The tobacco plant originally came from South America. Even though it is impossible to state exactly when it was brought to Cuba, it can be said that it happened between 3000 and 2000 B.C. The aborigines considered tobacco a miraculous medicine and an essential element in their religious, political and social ceremonies. It was a part of their agriculture and an inseparable part of life.
Europeans were introduced to this plant when they first reached the Americas. They learnt that it was a source of great physical and spiritual pleasure. It didn’t take long for the Old Continent to develop a passion for it. As was only to be expected, Spain was the first country to have the most smokers. The Spanish were also the first to be subjected to terrible punishments for smoking. The habit later spread to Persia, Japan, Turkey and Russia, where the cruelest punishments were established. Curiously, as bans on smoking gained ground, tobacco was increasingly used for medicinal purposes.
On April 11, 1717, King Philip V established a royal monopoly on tobacco-growing in Cuba. This has gone down in history as the Estanco del Tabaco. Tobacco-growers who opposed the onerous law lost their lives. The monopoly remained in effect until June 23, 1817, when a royal decree removed the monopoly, permitting free trade between Cuba and the rest of the known world as long as it was through Spanish ports.
No slaves were used in tobacco-growing. Sugarcane wasn’t such a delicate crop, and slaves could be used in its cultivation and harvesting, but, as José Martí said, tobacco plants had to be handled as carefully as if they were fine ladies. Immigrants from the Canary Islands worked in the tobacco fields, laying the foundations for a very special breed: the Cuban farmers. The 19th century provided the final reaffirmation of Cuba’s tobacco production. In 1859, there were nearly 10,000 tobacco plantations and around 1300 cigar factories in the capital. Cuba entered the 20th century in very precarious conditions, because its devastating wars of independence had just ended.
This information was Quote from
https://www.puroexpress.com/
MONTECRISTO
Cigar History
MONTECRISTO HISTORY
February/11/2017
In July 1935, Alonso Menéndez purchased the Particulares Factory, makers of the popular Particulares brand and the lesser-known Byron. Immediately after its acquisition, he created a new brand named Montecristo.
The name for the brand was inspired by the Alexandre Dumas, père novel The Count of Monte Cristo, which was supposedly a very popular choice among the torcedores (cigar rollers) in their factory to have read by the lector on the rolling floor. The now-famous Montecristo logo, consisting of a triangle of six swords surrounding a fleur-de-lis, was designed by John Hunter Morris and Elkan Co. Ltd., the brand's British distributor.
In July 1936, Menéndez founded a new firm with a partner, naming it Menéndez, García y Cía. With the growing success of the Montecristo brand, the firm purchased the faltering H. UpmannFactory from J. Frankau SA in 1937 and transferred the production of Montecristo from the Particulares Factory to H. Upmann, which continued to be the home of the Montecristo brand after the Revolution. Some sources have incorrectly stated that the original name of the cigar brand was H. Upmann Montecristo Selection, but the fact that the brand was founded by Menéndez in 1935 and his firm did not acquire H. Upmann until 1937 bears out the original name of Montecristo. The original line had only five numbered sizes, with a tubed cigar added during the 1940s, but otherwise remained unchanged until after nationalization in 1960.
J. Frankau continued to be the sole distributor of the H. Upmann brand in the UK, while John Hunter Morris and Elkan Co. Ltd. was the sole distributor of Montecristo in Britain. In 1963, these firms would merge to become Hunters & Frankau, which today is the sole importer and distributor of all Cuban cigars in the UK.
Through the efforts of Alfred Dunhill (the company), the Montecristo brand became incredibly popular worldwide and to this day accounts for roughly one-quarter of Habanos SA's worldwide cigar sales, making it the most popular Cuban cigar in the world. The Montecristo brand, the factory, and all assets were nationalized by the Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro on September 15, 1960.
After the Cuban Revolution, Menéndez and García fled to the Canary Islands where they re-established the brand, but were later forced to quit due to trademark disputes with Cubatabaco (later known as Habanos S.A.). In the mid-1970s, the operation was moved to La Romana in the Dominican Republic and released for the US market, since Cuban government rights to the brand were not recognized under U.S. law due to the 1960 nationalization and the subsequent embargo. Menéndez, García, y Cía is now owned by Altadis S.A., who controls its distribution and marketing in the United States.
With Menendez and Garcia gone after 1959, one of the top grade torcedores, José Manuel Gonzalez, was promoted to floor manager and proceeded to breathe new life into the brand. In the 1970s and 1980s, five new sizes were added: the A, the Especial No. 1 and 2, the Joyita, and the Petit Tubo. Three other sizes, the Montecristo No. 6, No. 7, and B, were released but subsequently discontinued, though the B can occasionally be found in very small releases each year in Cuba. Through the 1970s and 1980s, Montecristo continued to rise in popularity among cigar smokers, becoming one of Cuba's top selling cigar lines.