UK Cigar Scene Magazine January Issue 13 | Page 12

Cuban Machine Made Cigars

By Nic Wing

As a regular cigar smoker I have become aware of a feeling that any machine made cigar
was something to be looked down on. Then something extraordinary happened at a pre
Christmas event at the Skinners Hall in the City of London.
I was helping out at an event and dispensing,
cutting and lighting cigars for the guests. It had
been decided, mainly by the numbers and the
budget, that the cigar of choice for the evening was
to be a Guantanamera Minutos.
About half way through the evening a gentleman
lounged back in a large leather chair with his cigar
and a large brandy and asked me what the cigar
was. He told me he was a regular cigar smoker
and that he had for many years bought his boxes
of cigars, initially Bolivar and then as he grew
slightly older Hoyo de Monterrey, from a well
known St James’s Cigar Merchant.
He drew on his Minutos with delight and declared
it to be a really wonderful cigar. He even asked for
one to take away for a good friend of his so that he
could ‘share the love’
I had visions of being slung bodily out of the cigar
merchant’s if I was ever identified as the person
who had brought about this change of cigar.
But then I smoked one and found the cigar to be,
as Desmond Sautter used to say ‘most acceptable’.
So I decided to look a little deeper into the Cuban
machine made world. I remembered that our
friend Rhys Hamilton Davis, you remember, the
young man who made his way down from Ayr to
Davidoff to learn his trade as a Cigar Merchant,
had raved about a trip to the Havana factory where
machine made cigars are produced in early March
last year so I popped in to chat to him over lunch
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in the busy pre Christmas period.
Rhys remembered his trip to the ICT factory very
well. He told me he and the rest of his party had
been blown away by the sophistication of the
factory. The ICT Factory or Internacional Cubana
de Tabacos, S.A. to give it it’s full title is a joint
venture between a Spanish company which makes
cigars under license to Habanos S.A.
The Spanish market for machine made cigars is
huge and very price sensitive and this is clearly
where many of the cigars from this factory are
sent.
Rhys reported that there was obviously a huge
amount of investment going into both machinery
and staff in the factory. He saw many new
machines capable of handling bales of tobacco
and sorting it ready to be rolled into machine cut
wrappers.
He was told that the new equipment had many
advantages including productivity with one man
now capable of running two machines. The new
machines also have improved safety features and
dust reduction systems.
Rhys also reported that the workers in the factory
were among the happiest he had seen on his
trip. This may well stem from the sophisticated
equipment the use but it’s also very likely to be
because the workers have a large canteen and full
medical and dental services.