Originally published at Tiki Bar Online
Two weeks ago, I got to take my first trip to Nicaragua, courtesy of Drew Estate and their Cigar Safari tour program. Originally I was going to write as I experienced everything in-country and have several articles practically ready to post for the week after I returned. That didn’t happen…it got too busy to write down everything while I was there and when I came back, work was busy and I got sick. So it took a little longer to get to than I anticipated, but I am finally happy to bring you words, pictures and video from the trip, hopefully capturing at least a little of the sights, sounds, smells and feelings of being there.
I’ll start off with this: I had a great time in Nicaragua, and for that I owe a big thanks to all those at Drew Estate and Joya de Nicaragua who made it possible: Johnny Brooke, Jonathan Drew, Steve Saka, Willy Herrera, Nick Melillo, Jose Blanco, Juan Martinez, Pedro, our driver, our chefs, our wait staff…and so many others whose names I either never got or can’t recall. I’ll add at this time that you, too, can experience something like this. Cigar Safari is a program started by Drew Estate and they run over a dozen trips a year, many of which are wide open to the paying public. The trip price is about $600, with you providing airfare to and from Managua. If you are interested in learning about how cigars are made, as well as much more about the country where some of the world’s finest tobacco is grown, you should go. Check out their website for more details.
PRE-NICA
The trip started off pretty typically for me…work got extremely busy in the hours before I was to leave for the airport. I cleared my email just in time and got in the car before anyone else could ask me for “one more thing.” An hour to Chattanooga, two hours on a shuttle bus to Atlanta airport, two hours in the air to Miami, and I met up with Patrick Lagried from halfwheel.com and Barry Stein of Miami Cigar & Company (who acted as our host for the evening). We hit Cafe Versailles for my first authentic Cuban food (Ropa Vieja was fantastic and so was the Cuban coffee), then headed to one of Barry’s favorite hangouts, the Neighborhood Humidor store. That’s where Barry showed his skill at making Cafe Cubana; rumor has it that he will be working as a barista during the Chattanooga Tweet-Up. I know we don’t usually traffic in rumors here on the Tiki Bar, but this rumor is too good not to tell. We stayed at Sofitel, across the highway from the airport, and despite some booking snafus, it was a great hotel…for all of the 6 or so hours I got to spend there, anyway.
IN-COUNTRY
Wednesday morning, Patrick and I met up with David “Doc” Diaz (Stogie Fresh) in the lobby of Sofitel and took the shuttle over to the airport, where shortly we met up with Rob “RobbyRas” Rasmussen (RobbyRas Reviews), Patrick Semmens (Stogie Guys), and William Soled (Toasted Foot). One relatively short, but fairly bumpy plane ride later, we touched down in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua.
On de-planing, we were separated by just a thin sheet of glass from a few of the Trip 1 crew who were waiting on our plane so they could go home. It would have been nice to hang out for a few minutes with Tony Casas (Casas Fumando) and Will Cooper (Cigar-Coop), but the powers that be would not allow that, so we continued on. It was amusing to see that Passport Control was sponsored by Flor de Caña Rum. We were met outside by Drew Estate’s Public and Media Relations officer, Johnny Brooke, and within minutes the rest of our party arrived on the flight from Houston: Teresa Merchant and Tim Black from Smoking Hot Cigar Chick. Several people (including our own Keith Hollar) were scheduled to be on this trip, but had to drop out due to unforeseen circumstances.
The Doc (Stogie Fresh) and Will from Toasted Food
We piled into the Cigar Safari shuttle bus, popped open some beers, lit some cigars, and headed straight to lunch at El Tiscara. If I’m not mistaken we all opted for a 12 oz steak for lunch…only they really gave us each 2 of those, so about 24 ounces of fantastic beef, after a nice salad, plaintain chips, tostones, black bean dip, and fried cheese cubes, but before the tres leches for dessert. And the steak was accompanied by rice and french fries. And we were all very, very full and sleepy on the way back to the bus.
But there would be no sleep on the wild ride to Estéli, a two-and-a-half hour journey with plenty more beer and cigars, as well as a couple pitstops on the way. Dropping into the valley for the first time, the temperature felt immediately more pleasant and the air easier to breathe. Our tour guide, ??, told us that cigars are the main product of this region, with several thousand people working in the factories and fields, as well as almost everyone else benefitting from the presence of the tobacco workers who have to buy goods and services from someone. And then we arrived at our final destination…for today anyway.
The wall was recently completed
We were assigned rooms and given some time to make ourselves at home, then we all wandered to the lounge area, overlooking a creek and some tobacco fields. We were provided a dizzying array of cigars from just about every line made by Drew Estate and their partner company, Joya de Nicaragua. Soon we were joined by Willy Herrera, Steve Saka, and Jose Blanco, and pre-dinner conversation delved into weighty topics like the politics of personal freedoms (such as, but not limited to, cigar smoking) and “Why are baby back ribs called ‘baby back?'” The topics got better as bottles of Flor de Caña were opened and bottles of Blantons and Bulleit Bourbon appeared.
Dinner featured a choice of pork, beef, chicken and chorizo. I opted for beef and chorizo, both of which were excellent. And after dinner we had a tasting of several varieties of Flor de Caña, and I would say the 7 and 12 year were probably the best of the bunch. It was a long day and turned into a late night with less sleep than would be optimal…but that was just the start of a pattern.
THURSDAY
We woke up Thursday to a breakfast of egg tacos. Over the course of several meals, I found that I really like the local tortillas, a somewhat doughy, flour soft shell. After that we headed out to one of the Oliva family’s facilities. Our first stop there was a curing barn, a personal first for me. We were showing how the harvested leaves are matched by size, then threaded together and hung over poles, which were then transferred to another room in the barn where thousands of poles hung from (almost) floor to ceiling. The leaves are allowed to lose their chlorophyll and turn yellow through controlled heat and dry air…semi-controlled anyway since these barns are rustic and quite old. When additional heat is called for, a section of the barn has charcoal fires lit in pits around the floor, sending the temperature well above 100.
In the fields, Steve Saka showed us how the priming of the tobacco happened, with workers walking up and down the rows taking off certain leaves of each plant, then depositing them in crates at the end of the rows. We talked about hoyas (low spots in the field), desflorado (a practice of removing the flower at a certain point in the growth of the plant), and capadura (the cutting of the stalk near the base, which is then cross-cut so it can produce a second growth). It was all very interesting and made me want to try growing tobacco on my own property in Tennessee again…I just wish I had the time.
We next headed to a facility where the cured tobacco is stored, rehydrated and sorted. The tobacco is hooked onto huge “wheels of fortune” in a room where misters fill the air with…well, mist…and we walked through the upstairs rooms where dozens of ladies were sorting leaves by size and color.
Willy Herrera
After lunch, we were privileged to get a tour of the Joya de Nicaragua factory, the country’s oldest cigar factory and the first country to specialize in Nicaraguan cigars. Founded in the late 1960s after Cuban refugees discovered that the Estelí area could grow outstanding tobacco, Joya practically died while being run by the socialist government in the 1980s and was revived again in the ‘90s as a more freedom was gained by the people. JdN was one of the first companies to step into the “full-bodied, full-strength” cigar market with the Antaño 1970 more than 10 years ago, and they have really come to the fore-front of media attention in more recent year with their partnership with Drew Estate, the Antaño Dark Corojo, and the recent release of the CyB
Run for many years by Dr. Alejandro Martinez-Cuenca, he has recently turned over the rains of the company to his son, Juan Martinez, who is the new President. Along with Vice President, Jose Blanco, and a young and energetic team, they are working on rebranding Joya de Nicaragua to a more simple “Joya” and they are trying to focus their marketing efforts on “Nicaragua” as a country, a people, and a lifestyle.
Juan Martinez and Jose Blanco
Jose Blanco ran a testing seminar, and as usual he threw some curveballs at us. “Smoke a little of this short puro (made of a single type of tobacco) and tell me what the country of origin is, how many years it has been aging, and what priming it is.” I wish I could say I did better, but I think I may have gotten 1 or 2 right of all the 12 available answers. What did I learn? That I have a LOT more to learn!
Also of note during our blending session was that rainy season started. It was practically like flipping a switch. We were sitting there and heard distant booms. In Central American countries, you desperately hope distant booming is thunder, and in this case…it was! The skies opened up and rain pounded on the metal roof of the open-sided pavilion where we sat, obliterating any conversation. It did not last, but we were told that this was the first real rain in quite some time and that within a few days this kind of thing would be the norm.
Steve Saka would later tell me that a few years ago, the area got a stretch of 40+ days of rain during the rainy season. Because of the incredibly high humidity, the Drew Estate factory had to shut down for over 3 weeks. You heard right…if it’s too humid, you simply can’t make cigars. Important point: there is a magic spot for humidity and temperature for cigar growing, cigar production, cigar storage (in your humidor), and cigar smoking. While the magic spot may be wider for smoking them, temperature and humidity differences can definitely affect your smoking experience.
J.D.
That evening we had a whole roasted pig for dinner and Jonathan Drew (one of the founders of Drew Estate) got into town.
Part 2 of the Safari Journal will post on Tuesday, May 14.
