Smoking With The Fuentes

Cynthia Fuente-Suarez and her brother Carlos Fuente Jr. shared their enthusiasm for making fine cigars.

The cigar was rare, even by Fuente Fuente OpusX standards. The Super Belicoso size, which measures 5 1/2 inches by 52 ring gauge and has a suggested retail price of $11.50, is made by only one roller at Tabacalera A. Fuente. She bunches and rolls each Super Belicoso, using the slow entubar method of rolling each filler leaf into a small tube.

Many in the audience were smoking their first Fuente Fuente OpusX, which is especially hard to find in the Western United States. Just steps away from the conference room in Napoleon's cigar bar at the Paris hotel, several other sizes of Fuente Fuente OpusX were on sale at prices ranging from $50 to $95.

Fuente Jr. radiated with passion as he spoke to the enthusiastic audience. He choked up when he spoke of his Arturo Fuente Don Carlos cigar, named in honor of his father. "Every time I smoke a Don Carlos, I embrace my father," he said.

Fuente said the creation of his wrapper tobacco farm, Chateau de la Fuente, was the "realization of a dream." He spoke of his love of tobacco, which he called spiritual, saying that tobacco has to be "flavorful, feminine and powerful. Tobacco will beat you, it will beat you, it will beat you, but you love it so much that it will never get you down."

Fuente-Suarez spoke about the growing number of women who appreciate cigars. "I am so happy that I came here. I see more and more women enjoying cigars," said Fuente-Suarez. "So many women enjoy cigars with their spouses, and many smoke because they see how much fun their husbands are having."

--David Savona

Doug Doan

Doug Doan tells the crowd how he plowed up his Virginia backyard and planted tobacco.

Enter Doug Doan. Cigar Aficionado readers will remember Doan as the enterprising Virginian who planted tobacco seeds on his property, grew, cured and fermented the tobacco, and had it rolled into cigars he called Virginia Blues. His story was so compelling that we published it in the April 2001 issue of Cigar Aficionado and put it on this Web site. Later, we invited him to speak at the Las Vegas Big Smoke.

And did he speak. Doan took the podium in style, wearing a guayabera and a straw hat in honor of his hero, Carlos Fuente Jr. He then started talking and showing a slide show of his work.

"One day, when my wife was out of town, I did what any of you would have done," he said. "I plowed under half my yard and planted it with tobacco."

The crowd roared its approval.

Doan, an animated speaker, enchanted the packed audience with his tale of trial and tribulation, a pioneer growing tobacco in modern day suburbia. He bought seeds on the Internet, created an Ortho cocktail when he couldn't find a pesticide that would cure the tobacco hornworm, and found a new respect for the efforts of his favorite cigarmakers, the Fuentes.

"This was my dream," he said, clicking the slide projector. An image of Carlos Fuente Sr. and Jr. standing in their tobacco field had been doctored, adding the photo of Doan, as if he were standing beside them. "This was my dream -- to be a Fuente."

Doan is no Fuente, but he has earned the respect of the legendary cigarmakers. When Carlos Fuente Jr. took the podium, he embraced Doan. The two had spent time in the Dominican Republic together at Fuente's farm.

Doan concluded by urging the audience to celebrate a perfect day with cigars. He left to a standing ovation.

--David Savona

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