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Home > Cigar Stars Index Page > Hendrik Kelner
TobaccoMan
Henke Kelner, Maker of Davidoff Cigars, Is a True Lover of the
Leaf and a Demanding Connoisseur of a Good Smoke
by James Suckling
The layers of thick gray smoke make it
difficult to see the men sitting in the small room. Each man has five
or six cigars burning in ashtrays, like players with cards face up on
a table in a game of five-card stud. The conversation is friendly, yet
there's a competitive edge to the words being spoken.
"What do you think of this cigar?" asks a man sitting behind a desk,
handing another man a cigar. The second man takes the corona in
his hands and grins as he looks at it and smells the
wrapper. He bites off the end of the cigar and draws on it, unlit. He
smiles again, then kindles it with a butane lighter and takes a few
puffs.
"Is that strong enough for you?" asks the first man.
"This is powerful," says the other man with a huge smile, as he
slouches in an armchair in some sort of relaxed tobacco nirvana. "It
must be all ligero leaf, but I detect a good amount of Ecuadorian
tobacco in this one, due to its salty character. You must be using
binder from Ecuador, but maybe the filler is also from there?"
"You're right, Henke," says Manuel "Manolo" Quesada with a
smile. Quesada owns MATASA, one of the major producers of premium
cigars in the Dominican Republic. "You are always frigging right."
Henke (pronounced Hank-key), more formally known as Hendrik Kelner,
is one of the Dominican Republic's most knowledgeable tobacco men. He
is a small, unimposing fellow with a soft, cozy look and a big warm
smile. At 50, Kelner is to Dominican cigars what chefs Alain Ducasse
and Joël Robuchon are to French cuisine. They are all masters in
their fields, transforming raw materials such as tobacco or food into
something fabulous.
Born and raised in a Dominican tobacco family, Kelner is unmatched in
the country for his knowledge and understanding of tobacco and cigar
making. Since 1984, his company, Tabacos Dominicanos, S.A., has been
producing some of the most sought-after handmade smokes to come out of
this island cigar paradise: Davidoffs, Avos, Troyas and The
Griffin's. He is the unofficial tobacco guru for almost all the cigar
producers in and around the city of Santiago, constantly stopping by
the other factories for coffee and a cigar to discuss the various
aspects of cigar production.
"What can you say about Henke?" says Quesada. "He certainly knows his
stuff."
Adds Avo Uvezian, the founder of the Avo brand: "He is really the
master. There is no better man on this island for making cigars. No
one knows more about tobacco and no one makes them any better."
Kelner overhears Uvezian's praise but seems to take it all with
a large grain of sea salt. He rolls his eyes in slight embarrassment
as he sits on his office couch smoking a Davidoff Gran Cru. He would
never speak that way about himself, or just about anyone else he
knew. Indeed, all he ever wants to discuss is tobacco. The man is
totally obsessed with the leaf.
"I love every aspect of cigar making, from the tobacco fields to the
rolling galleries," says Kelner with a slightly guilty look. "People
sometimes ask me what stage of cigar production I like best. I can't
make up my mind. I like it all. Besides, it all happens at different
times, with the exception of cigar making. The crop is from October to
January, February. The fermentation process is April, May, June and
July. And we finish everything in November." Then, for Kelner, it all
starts over again.
Kelner's zealotry for tobacco is almost the stuff of legend. He spends
hours studying every aspect of cigar making: soils and climates of the
tobacco fields, temperatures and efficiency of fermentation, quality
and style of cigar rolling and, finally, the aromas and tastes of
different blends and cigars. He probably hasn't read a novel or
watched a film in years. He's too busy reading and writing about the
various aspects of Dominican tobacco and cigar making. He has reams of
documents, magazines, graphs, slides and books about tobacco and cigar
production.
"I am convinced that the only way to make quality cigars is to have
control through the entire process," he says as he puffs away on what
must be his 10th cigar of the day. "The problem with the cigar
business has been a question of tradition. Traditionally, even before
the Cuban Revolution, cigar producers did not have much to do with
tobacco growers. They knew everything about making cigars, but very
little about growing tobacco."
Tobacco growing is certainly one area in which Henke outshines many of
his contemporaries, no matter where they originate--including the
Dominican Republic, Honduras or Cuba, Kelner works with a core of
tobacco growers about a half hour's drive from Santiago near the town
of Villa Gonzalez. He logs in thousands of miles a year crisscrossing
the Yaque Valley in his battered 1988 burgundy Jeep Cherokee, visiting
growers and checking on the tobacco fields. Kelner has even created
his own tobacco growing map for the prime Dominican regions, denoting
the styles and qualities of the various plantations up and down the
valley. It's a little like the classification system for
Burgundy vineyards, which ranks particular plots of land according to
their soil, climate and quality for growing grapes.
It all makes Kelner better informed about tobacco. With about 1,200
acres of tobacco under his control, Kelner has long-term contracts to
buy tobacco from about three dozen farmers each harvest. He treats
them more like family than like business associates since he knows
that he has to get the best possible tobacco from them. "The quality
of the different processes at the tobacco farms is crucial," says
Kelner. "If you make a mistake with growing or processing the tobacco,
you can't reverse the problem. You have to be right the first
time. So, I rely on my growers to do things properly.
"It depends on the time of the year, but during the growing season,
I may visit each farmer a couple of times a day," he says, emphasizing
that he gives them technical advice as well as fertilizers and other
products to grow a successful crop. "I like to see with my own
eyes what happens with the tobacco. I like to see the ripening of the
tobacco, the quality of the leaf. I also like to see how the farmers
are handling their tobacco and see the conditions in the curing
barns."
Kelner must know and understand the origins and quality of all the
tobacco he uses, since he is one of the few premium cigar producers in
the world who base their cigar blends on specific farms. From the
moment he receives the tobacco from his various farmers, he maintains
and processes each crop separately until the tobacco is finally
blended for a particular cigar. Kelner, a keen wine drinker, likes to
compare the way he makes cigars to the production of great red
Bordeaux. Both are blends of different components--tobacco and
grapes--with their own unique character due to their provenance.
"One of the most important things is to keep everything separate,"
says Kelner. "I keep track of every leaf from every farmer at every
step. Then you can make real decisions on blends. The only problem is
that you have to keep a good inventory of tobacco, and financial
people sometimes don't understand this. You can't make great blends
without a good inventory of different tobacco. The tobacco from all my
farms are different. You can have one next to the other and they may
seem to have the same seed, soil and climate, but you have different
quality. There are small differences in everything."
Driving through the tobacco fields in late January, Kelner wore a huge
smile as he visited a handful of his growers near the towns of Villa
Gonzalez, Navarette and Jacagua. A policeman on the road might have
mistaken Kelner for someone who had a few too many cervezas at
lunch, considering his jolly mood and rather erratic driving, but
Kelner was high on the excitement of one of the best harvests in
years. Although the Dominican Republic had plenty of rain and cooler
than normal temperatures this year, the tobacco was in beautiful
condition--and there was lots of it. "The last time we had a harvest
like this was 1992," says Kelner, as he swerves to miss a tractor and
roars down the highway, which runs the length of the valley. "This
year is really a great crop for us. We can use the tobacco much more
quickly, since it is a lighter style of tobacco. We don't have to age
it as long; plus, we have a large quantity. It is about 60 percent
larger than last year's crop."
Eladio Diaz, Kelner's right-hand man, was equally enthusiastic
about this year's crop. Diaz and Kelner are inseparable, with Diaz
primarily involved with production. "I have worked for 16 years with
Kelner, and we really complement one another," says Diaz. "He is
really the expert in tobacco and I take care of the processing and
production."
Kelner's manufacturing operation consists of two factories: one for
Davidoff, called Tabadom, located on the outskirts of Santiago, and
the other in Villa Gonzalez. He has about 550 employees, including
about 119 cigar rollers at Tabadom and 110 rollers in Villa
Gonzalez. The latter factory produces about 5 million cigars a year,
while Tabadom makes more than 6 million. The Swiss-based company
Oettinger owns a large chunk of Kelner's firm, although he claims he
still retains the majority interest.
"Davidoff would like us to make 18 million cigars a year, because I am
sure that we could sell more than 20 million, but we don't want to
grow too quickly," says Kelner, who plans to make about 15 million
cigars in 1996. "We still have to maintain our quality, and it's
difficult if you grow too quickly."
Kelner has come a long way since 1984, when he was a general
manager at the Dominican Republic state tobacco company, Tabacalera
S.A. An industrial engineer by training, Kelner worked primarily in
cigarette production, although he was instrumental in reestablishing a
premium cigar factory for the state-run company. "It was really good
for me to work in the cigarette business," he says. "The business is
very advanced and very high-tech. I learned a lot, especially about
tasting, flavors, analysis and other aspects of tobacco. When I
decided to go into the cigar business, I decided to apply some of the
technologies from the cigarette business to cigars. The cigar industry
has been too traditional in the past. New ideas and technologies must
be applied to making cigars, as well as maintaining the important
traditions."
Watching his two factories in action, a visitor would be hard-pressed
to see many innovations. Nearly everything is still done by hand,
which follows Kelner's view that making cigars should remain an
art. The new ideas and methods Kelner has incorporated at his
factories are mostly behind the scenes, in tobacco processing and
quality control. It was Kelner's dedication to quality and his
frustrations with the government's bureaucratic mentality that had
convinced him to leave his state job and strike out on his own. "I had
some major problems with people working for the state," he recalls. "I
basically treated my job like I was in a private company, and that
didn't go over so well. I loved my job because I loved tobacco, but
one day I decided that it wasn't worth it anymore. I wasn't making
that much money and I was always fighting with people."
In 1984, after nearly 15 years with the state tobacco group, Kelner
founded his own cigar business. He discovered that it was relatively
inexpensive to get started. With loans from friends and family, he
opened his first factory--the same one that now makes Davidoff cigars
and a few other brands in Santiago. "I started off with $8,000 of my
own money," he says with a laugh. "In total, the investment was about
$80,000. We started making The Griffin's brand and inexpensive
bundled cigars. We didn't have many contacts in the industry. We were
making less than 1 million cigars in the first year. In the second
year, we were up to about 1.5 million and by the third year, we were
close to 2 million."
Remarkably, Kelner never thought about making his own brand at the
time, although the thought does cross his mind from time to time. "Of
course, I have thought about it," he says. "I would love to have my
own brand, a Kelner brand. But my customers might start thinking that
I am using my best tobacco, my best rollers for my brand and not
theirs. I don't need that. For me, it is more important to make very
good cigars for my customers. I don't need the fame of my own brand."
He definitely has plenty to contend with already, as production is
soaring for most of his major brands. In 1995, production from
both factories totaled: Davidoff, 5.5 million; Avo, 1.4 million; The
Griffin's, 1.2 million; Paul Garmirian, 600,000; and Troya,
300,000. Kelner's forecast for 1996 is 6 million Davidoffs, 2 million
Avos, 2 million The Griffin's, 700,000 Paul Garmirians and 300,000
Troyas.
In addition, Kelner has a few experimental projects under way, such as
growing a couple of acres of shade- and sun-grown tobacco for
wrappers. "I am very excited by these projects," he says. "The quality
is very good. I don't think that I would get into the wrapper tobacco
business. It's too expensive and I have enough going already. But
maybe I can interest another company to do so."
Kelner is always brewing up new ideas. He never seems completely
satisfied. After lunch at his home in Santiago, with his wife, Enilda,
and five children (the oldest is 22 and the youngest is two), Kelner
sits with a small glass of Spanish brandy and a Davidoff double
corona. He puffs on the cigar and talks about life--family,
cigars, friends, wine and just about anything else that comes to
mind. The man looks totally content, but then someone brings up
Cuba. Kelner perks up, puts down his glass and thinks for a moment. "I
would love to make cigars with Cuban tobacco," he says with an almost
dreamy look in his eyes, as he watches the smoke from his cigar float
into the room. "But it would be a blend. I am sure that Cuban tobacco
and Dominican tobacco would work well together."
Who knows what the future holds for Kelner. Cuban cigars, Dominican
wrapper leaf--there doesn't appear to be much that Kelner can't do
with tobacco when he puts his mind to it.
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