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Made in Miami, page two
Posted: Monday, May 11, 2009
Cigar culture in Miami is old, but not as old as you might think. Simon Camacho is credited with opening the city's first cigar factory, but that didn't take place until 1961. (At that time, the vast majority of American cigars were rolled in Tampa; before that, in the nineteenth century, most had been made in Key West, until hurricanes forced the industry to move north.) In 1964, three men opened factories within months of one another in Miami: José Orlando Padrón, Efraim Gonzalez, who later created the Dos Gonzalez brand, and Juan Sosa, who now works for Arturo Fuente. Four years later, Ernesto Perez-Carrillo Sr., a former member of the Cuban senate, opened El Credito Cigars Inc., bringing the La Gloria Cubana name to the United States.
The expensive labor of Miami doomed it as a major outpost from which to make cigars, and companies moved offshore to expand. Padrón shifted production to Nicaragua. El Credito moved to the Dominican Republic (while keeping a small Miami factory.) Consolidated Cigar Corp. (today Altadis U.S.A. Inc.) closed El Moro Cigar in the early 1970s, shifting production of Primo del Rey from the Florida city to the Dominican Republic. Reyes Family Cigars, long known as Puros Indios Cigars and before that as Cuba Aliados, made cigars in Miami during the late 1980s, but relocated to Honduras.
Carlos Diez, of Reyes Family Cigars, uses his Miami factory to roll stronger cigars than are made in the company's Honduras facility.
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In November, Reyes Family Cigars started making cigars again in Miami for the first time in nearly 10 years, installing wooden roller's stations and employing six locals to make specialty cigars for sale there and on a national basis.
"People just like hearing that cigars are made in Miami. It does add prestige to a cigar," says Carlos Diez, president of Reyes Family Cigars. "I've always wanted to do it. I'm not in Honduras every day. I want to get away from the whole sales thing, and get more into manufacturing. Having the factory here was a positive for me."
Diez had to deal with a dissenting opinion at first—that of his grandfather, Reyes Family patriarch Rolando Reyes Sr., who runs the company's cigar factory in Danlí, Honduras. "At first he was doubting it—he's a control freak," says Diez.
"I can make my own brands here that [my grandfather] doesn't want to do. They're stronger—a lot stronger. These blends aren't being made in Honduras," he says. "The fact that we have the rollers here allows me to make very limited runs, very little projects that I'm excited about."
To find rollers, Diez simply turned to the local Cuban workforce. "They walk to work," says Diez. "We're doing everything Cuban-style. The rollers, in my opinion, are better than anywhere in Latin America…. It allows us to put out a better product."
While a cigar made without Cuban tobacco will never taste completely like a Cuban cigar, many of the cigars made in Miami certainly exhibit some Cuban-style touches that you don't get from most Central American or Dominican factories.
The first element is the true hand roll done in Miami; you almost never see a Lieberman or Temsco bunching machine on a roller's table in Miami (the hand-powered devices are ubiquitous in the Dominican Republic). The process is done entirely by hand, and is performed by one worker who—in the Cuban style—both bunches and rolls the cigar. In Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, one worker typically makes the bunch while another rolls the wrapper around the cigar.
"There's no pairs in the Cuban way of making cigars. You bunch it, you wrap it; [such a cigarmaker] is a lot more familiar with the way of making cigars," says Padilla.
In addition, Miami cigar factories make cigars with mounted heads, also known as three-seam caps, which is how it's done in Cuba. Few factories elsewhere make cigars this way.
Perez-Carrillo feels a close bond with cigar rollers, and admires their artistry. He waxes poetic about the old days, when Cuban rollers made cigars stubbornly in their own way. One man even used rubber bands instead of molds, for that's how he was taught. There was considerable pride in the
process.
"Just the way they sat at the table—they were made to be making cigars. There was such a finesse, such a flow. Pre-Castro cigars were made in a certain way," says Perez-Carrillo. "After that, there was a different style, in my opinion.
"At one time, in the early '70s, there were 26 cigar factories here. There was Camacho, Padrón, El Moro—those were the pioneers," says Perez-Carrillo, who in March will depart as head of El Credito to make new cigars with his son and daughter. He's leaving behind not only his
venerable brand name, but the Calle Ocho fabrica he's called home for decades. At one time in the mid-1990s, it had as many as 35 cigarmakers and made every La Gloria Cubana, but to expand the brand he had to add much larger production capacity in the Dominican Republic. Owners General Cigar Co. and Swedish Match AB have said they will keep the iconic cigar factory, the anchor to any cigar tourist's trip to Little Havana.
"We [now] have four, five cigar factories in a two- or three-mile distance," says Perez-Carrillo, puffing away on a La Gloria. "When Pepin started making cigars here, it revived the Miami thing. That definitely helped a lot."
Pepin is Jose "Pepin" Garcia, Perez-Carrillo's next-door neighbor, a superb roller originally from Cuba, who opened his own factory, El Rey de los Habanos, in 2003.
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