| u love cigars--if you're a true cigar aficionado--you | | | | battered in a storm. Perfect! |
| probably wonder, every now and again, what life is | | | | You don't find conditions like these everywhere--in |
| like for the hard-working folks who grow the | | | | fact, it'd be tough to find them anywhere in the |
| tobacco for your favorite cigars. | | | | United States, which is why we're not known as |
| Well, if it's premium cigars you like to smoke--perhaps | | | | producers of filler tobacco. Nicaragua, Brazil, Honduras, |
| by the box, perhaps one by one in a premium cigar | | | | Mexico, the Dominican Republic and a number of |
| sampler--then the first thing to know is that your | | | | other countries are also ace filler-tobacco producers. |
| cigar is made by people from all over the world. In | | | | For the more leathery, sturdier leaves that make the |
| many premium cigars, the wrapper (outer portion) of | | | | best wrappers, though, the United States offers a |
| the cigar will come from one region, the binder (inner | | | | handful of ideal locations. The East Coast in the |
| leaves which help hold the cigar together and add | | | | summer, for example, with a level of rain that hurts |
| something to the flavor) from another, and the filler | | | | filler tobacco (though some is produced there) but is |
| (from which much of the flavor comes) from | | | | just fine for wrappers, produces some of the finest |
| another. | | | | wrappers in the world. |
| Why all this international complication? Well, there are | | | | Filler produced in less-than-ideal conditions commands |
| three things to remember about the tobacco plant: | | | | a lower price on the world market, which makes it a |
| as plants go, it's lazy, wimpy, and picky. | | | | less efficient cash crop for farmers. Why not grow |
| Picky. Some organisms have evolved in order to | | | | wrapper tobacco and make more money, since the |
| maintain survival at all costs (locusts and Circus | | | | United States offers ample conditions for the |
| Peanuts come to mind), but that's not tobacco. This | | | | production of world-beating wrappers? |
| plant thrives in a very particular set of conditions. In | | | | Lazy. When you plant tobacco seeds, you don't |
| fact, those conditions are essentially the ones that | | | | actually plant them in the traditional sense of the |
| you'll experience if you stick a finger in your | | | | word--you sprinkle them on the ground, let them lie |
| humidor--a high level of humidity (sixty-seven to | | | | on the surface, and they take root of themselves. |
| seventy-four percent relative humidity) but a low | | | | (Some planters will swish them in a pail of water and |
| level of actual wetness; mild warm temperatures | | | | dump the water willy-nilly on the ground.) Tobacco |
| (sixty-nine to seventy-three degrees); sunlight, but | | | | seeds don't like having to fight up from underneath |
| not too much of it. Tobacco has evolved to prefer | | | | the ground. |
| soil that is wet, and yet it doesn't want to be rained | | | | Obviously, this strange trait also means that tobacco |
| on. Talk about impossible to please! That's why the | | | | seeds can't be planted just anywhere. Places that are |
| world's best filler, according to common opinion, | | | | prone to frost until late in the year are insalubrious |
| comes from Cuba's Vuelta Abajo valley region. Here, | | | | locations for tobacco farming. Anything that disturbs |
| the soil is rained on extensively most months out of | | | | the area close to the soil's surface is going to have |
| the year, but conditions are dry during the growing | | | | negative implications for the survival of tobacco |
| season: the soil stays wet without the plant getting | | | | seedlings. |