Last call for this Friday’s Cigar Hunter prize giveaway. Register today for the Cigar Hunter email list and you could win a box of House Resolution by JC Newman cigars from Corona Cigar Co., and a dual-guillotine cutter from Cigar Cutters By Jim featuring the SEAL Team VI insignia. (The winner must be 18 years old by Oct. 5, 2012.)
Today’s photographic guest smoker: Don King. I give you my word King will be the only race-baiting convicted killer to be honored in this space, unless another boxing promoter has his murder rap erased by an Ohio governor and later aspires to host sanctioned slug-fests in North Korea. I’m funny that way.
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So, Mr. Fuente goes to Washington. So does Mr. Gomez, Mr. Padrón, Mr. Patel, Mr. Eiroa, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Paley, Mr. Samel — well, you get the idea. Los jefes from Arturo Fuente, La Flor Dominicana, Padrón, Rocky Patel, CLE, Tatuaje, La Palina, Drew Estate and other brands were all under one rooftop tent in the nation’s capital last Friday night.
For a cigar geek like me, it was like meeting royalty.
And these kings and princes spoke freely about politics and what they’ll be bringing to market in the coming months. Maybe it was the open bar.
You may have heard of “Big Smokes,” the Cigar Aficionado charity fundraisers that can cater to “thousands and thousands of cigar lovers” at a time. This event was the corresponding “Little Puff” hosted by W. Curtis Draper Tobacconist, a legendary cigar shop whose retail space has been just steps from the White House since Grover Cleveland was president (the first time around) in 1887.
Ticket sales benefited scholarship funds, including one named for a Navy SEAL killed in action. They capped the tickets at fewer than than 300 guests, most of whom paid $200 each to get in. (A few VIPs paid more.)
Of course, $200 is a lot of money to smoke cigars and schmooze for four hours, but every attendee also collected 27 — yes, 27 — premium cigars, one from each of the manufacturers who came to promote their brands. Plus a giant humi-bag from Boveda and a can of butane from XIKAR. (Here’s the inventory if you’re interested. And since I smoked some of these, it’s possible a few details are wrong. Feel free to correct me if you were there.)
Being a cigar geek and a notoriously cheap guy, I had to know if I was getting a good deal. So I totaled it up, using an average of three online prices for each cigar. And guess what? Blowing $200 at the Little Puff saved me money. It would cost $227 to buy everything I walked away with, or smoked, Friday night.
Yes, yes, it was for the children. Scholarships. I know. Now step aside: Free brisket, pulled pork and roasted goat (no joke) await. There’s a topless girl named Rachel wearing body paint over there. And I need to find the sultans of Cigaristan to continue my education.
I learned that Carlito Fuente has held back the introduction of his anniversary cigars until next year. “We have several brands that we were prepared to release this year for our 100th anniversary, and unfortunately we had huge fires, lost two huge buildings, we’re out some 8,000 [tobacco] bales.”
Jorge Padrón said that in addition to the Padrón Anniversary No. 4 vitola for his 1964 Anniversario that’s already available, he’s busy testing blends for a 50th anniversary stogie due out in 2014.
Why so few new cigars from Padrón, compared to, say, Drew Estate or Rocky Patel? “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Jorge replied.
Litto Gomez told me about his “Oro” line — “Oro, for gold” — that’s due out in a few weeks. He also promised to send me a few.
“We’ve got a totally new wrapper that we’ve never used before,” he said, “a Habano from Nicaragua. It’s spectacular. Lots of flavor.” It took “almost four years” for La Flor Dominicana to age the wrappers and ensure there would be enough continuous supply.
Nobody who understands cigars should be surprised that absolutely every big name I approached was happy to speak with me. These guys are all passionate about cigars. But most of them have also been lobbying their ashes off this year, and the threat of devastating new regulations from the Food and Drug Administration had them in a talkative mood.
To recap: The FDA has announced a plan, which could reach its final stage any day now, to apply to premium cigars most of the regulations that already apply to cigarettes. In response, the industry is lobbying a bill that would put stogies out of the FDA’s reach. (DETAILS: FDA stogie politics update, and some free cigars)
Washington is where business come to stay in business, of course. But when I asked a half-dozen cigar titans why they’re so worried, not one of them talked about keeping his own job. Most cited their employees, a majority of whom work in Third World countries.
“We’re going to lose a lot of jobs [held by] people who need money,” Tatuaje Cigars owner Pete Johnson explained. “You never know what people are going to get into when they don’t have money.”
Many of Johnson’s cigars are rolled in Nicaragua. He understands what it’s like to live on society’s margins.
“You know, when I was a kid I used to steal a lot because I didn’t have a lot. … A lot of people count on what we do at those factories, on those farms. If they didn’t have those jobs, you never know what’s going to happen.”
Interview after interview, I got the sense that entire nations’ economies are linked to cigar tobacco.
“Directly and indirectly, between Honduras and Nicaragua, [we have] almost 1,500 or 1,600 people working for us,” Rocky Patel told me.
And if his business goes under, their steady employment vanishes.
“Well, they’ll be out of a job. And then next thing you know they’ll be trafficking cocaine and marijuana,” he said. “We already have a problem with the Mexican drug lords moving into Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala.”
“Look at [Nicaraguan] cities like Danlí and Estelí. Eighty percent of the population works in the cigar industry, whether it’s in the farms, in the curing, in the fermentation, in the factories. It’s very, very important. Eighty percent of them [the cigar workers] are single mothers, ’cause the men leave and they go to the cities looking for a job.
“We’re opening schools, we’re opening nurseries,” Patel said.
Litto Gomez, the La Flor Dominicana firebrand, said that unemployed Americans can “reinvent ourselves,” but for those in the Dominican Republic “there is not much to choose from.” (RELATED: Litto Gomez and the Rocky Mountain haircut)
He agreed that many, if not most, of his own employees would probably not find other legitimate jobs if an FDA regulatory spree were to shut him down or if new taxes should kill his sales. Some, he agreed, would turn to drug cartels or prostitution, “or they will be trying to … come into the United States illegally.”
“Or they will become communists,” he added, upping the ante. “Or there will be another [Hugo] Chavez in the Dominican Republic, and another Chavez in Nicaragua. There are a lot of consequences to this.”
More than 300,000 families in the Dominican Republic alone make their living from cigar tobacco, Gomez said. And federal regulators “don’t understand the consequences of what they do sometimes.”
“The anti-smoking movement, they want to get rid of all tobacco,” he told me. “And we are in with ‘all tobacco.’ … We are collateral damage.”
And that, said Jorge Padrón, adds up to “a serious threat — a very dangerous threat.”
“It’s putting this traditional business of making hand-made, quality products [at risk]. We’re in serious risk of losing this beautiful industry.”
I think he’s right.
Nobody really knows how heavy a hammer the federal government intends to swing in the direction of your humidor. But if you enjoy cigars, you might want to stock up this year.
“We’re going to lose not only cigars, but we’re going to lose a lot of freedom,” Gomez told me with more anger than sadness in his eyes. “If you look at this with a microscope, it’s about cigars. If you look at this as a macro thing, it’s the government overreaching its power.”
Two years ago, Gomez ran an expensive two-page ad in Cigar Aficionado that spelled out his personal anti-Nanny State philosophy. He never even mentioned his cigar brand. I absolutely loved it.
“As adults, we have the right to choose our lifestyle,” the ad read. “As I recall, it was called freedom, and that’s what makes America the best country in the world. If you don’t smoke and think that this does not concern you … think again, because one day, after they are done with cigars, a fat congressman while munching on his french fries will write a bill taxing your favorite food. We should not let them legislate our lifestyle.”
That lifestyle, Rocky Patel explained Friday night in his signature fast patter, is the exact opposite of what people in Washington, D.C. are accustomed to.
It’s about sitting down and slowing down. And it can appeal to just about everyone.
“That’s the beauty of a cigar,” Patel said. “In the day of Facebook and Twitter when nobody has a civil conversation, you can sit and relax, talk about life, sports, politics, and just actually slow down and enjoy.”
Enjoying a cigar “crosses party lines, crosses every socioeconomic line,” International Premium Cigar and Pipe Retailers Association CEO Bill Spann added.
“Cigars are like blue jeans: They’re just about the most democratic thing there is.”