Although
there are some renowned high-quality cigar companies in the United States, the
majority of premium cigars consumed in the nation are imported from Nicaragua,
the Dominican Republic, and Honduras. However, almost all cigars that were
smoked in the country, sixty years ago, were made at home.
Most of
them were installed at the beginning of the last century and even at the end of
the 19th century, and they were scattered throughout various parts of the
United States, although Florida was always one of the most important cigar
manufacturing centers, especially Tampa, where more than 200 factories
coexisted for several decades and came to produce more than 500 million units
each year. Such was the boom in production in Tampa that they called it
"Cigar City"; there are still some well-known manufacturers such as
J.C. Newman Cigars and Arturo Fuente Cigars.
Today,
however, the most popular location for many of the best American cigars is
Miami, a city that has become a stronghold for their manufacturing, with a few
small factories located in the Little Havana neighborhood. Just 11 years ago,
Casa Fernandez opened a 2,200-square-foot factory there, which is probably the
newest cigar factory in the city. At that time, they called it Casa Fernandez
Miami and many of the brand's production were transferred to that place, which
until then had been made in Honduras.
In 2018,
Casa Fernandez Miami was converted into Aganorsa Leaf by its owner and founder,
Eduardo Fernandez, with the aim of unifying its cigar production with the
agricultural conglomerate of the same name, also owned by him, recognized as
one of the largest producers and Nicaraguan tobacco suppliers for the premium
cigar industry.
Aganorsa
Leaf is one of the few companies that maintains factories in Nicaragua and
Miami. Its owner, born in Cuba but raised in New York, had the support of one
of the best master blenders in the business, Cuban Arsenio Ramos, an expert in
fermentation. They also use Cuban seeds and veteran Cuban agronomists oversee
the tobacco, equally cultivated in the old-fashioned Cuban way. One of its
specialties is Corojo tobacco and, to a lesser extent, Criollo.
The cigars
that are manufactured in Miami are made in the traditional Cuban manner, with a
roller that groups and rolls the cigars entirely by hand. For them they only
use the best tobaccos from their Nicaraguan farms in Estelí, Condega and Jalapa
and, for the most part, they are superior premium cigars or what is known today
as boutique tobacco.
A few years
ago, they began to increase distribution in the US, for which they created a
company in California, to reach the entire West coast of the country.
In our
store we have available the Casa Fernandez New Cuba, cigars made in the Cuban
style in the Nicaraguan factory, in Churchill, Robusto, Toro and Torpedo
formats. All are filled with select Nicaraguan leaves grown from authentic
Cuban seeds, in the lands of Aganorsa Leaf, and covered with a delicious wrapper
of Corojo.
For added
appeal, all of these medium-soft bodied cigars are currently at package prices,
which is unusual for cigars of their quality. You can't miss them!
