This blog will be longer than the others I’ve posted about my trip because I’m going to give you a virtual tour of Drew Estate, and do my best to convey to you all of the amazing information I learned along the way. So grab a cigar and start reading!
First, let’s go over the residence at the factory. When you go on the cigar tour you get to ride in this pimp bus:
And you get these “VIP all-access passes”
And you get to stay at this beautiful casita on the factory premises:
Here’s the actual building where the rooms are. The rooms are hotel quality- there’s even a maid- and every two rooms share a bathroom.
This is the cigar lounge at DE which was stocked with booze and cigars that we could help ourselves to to our heart’s content. Awesome.
And here’s the outside of the Drew Estate factory. In my opinion, this was the nicest factory in Nicaragua. Not only is it new and pretty, but it doesn’t feel like a factory, by that I mean all sterile and cold. It’s colorful and painted and full of life.
Okay, here we go: the factory tour! This room is the “pre-industry” room, basically where all the raw tobacco is stored. This room is HUGE, much bigger than the picture shows, and Jon told us that it’s only a six week supply of tobacco!
More tobacco storing:
We didn’t see any fermentation or pilons at DE, but we only saw 75,000 sq ft of the 100.000 sq ft factory. Some things, like the infusion process, are secretive. We’ll get to pilons and tobacco fields in the Pepin blog to follow.
Next the tobacco goes into a humid room to soften it for rolling:
Once the tobacco is softened it’s sorted by type (capa, capote, ligero, seco, viso) and origin.
And then it’s rolled into the cigars. We didn’t see any rolling machines (to call it a machine is a stretch) here, but we did at some other factories. The rolling machine is just some cloth that a roller puts the tobacco in and manually rolls a lever over it, and this causes the cigar to roll up on itself. At places where we did see it used, it was for short filler cigars, or for the new rollers who were still learning.
After rolling, the cigars are put in a mold and pressed in this contraption for 20 minutes, then they are turned and pressed again for 20 minutes. This picture is actually from the Oliva factory because I didn’t get one at DE.
Once the cigars are rolled, molded and pressed, they are wrapped and capped, and once that is done, they are “wicked” which means left in a room to dry out for up to 48 hours. Once a cigar is wicked, it’s smokeable for about 2 days, and then it falls into a “sick” period for about 10 days, during which you don’t want to smoke it due to the ammonia being leeched out. The only brand that doesn’t really have this problem is Padron because they are using super aged tobacco with basically no ammonia left in it at all. This is the wicking room:
Some cigars are put into box pressed molds, like this one, to create a square feel:
Once the cigars are wicked, they are sorted on either a black or white table (black is better for sorting maduros). The cigars are sorted by color so that each box has cigars that look alike. This is why you might get a box of cigars and then find that a second box of cigars has a much lighter wrapper. It doesn’t mean it’s a different wrapper, it’s simply a variation in wrapper color grouped together.
Sorting:
Demonstration of wrapper color variation (at Rocky Patel), this is all the same cigar with major color differences:
Once the like colors are grouped together, they are sent to quality control. Drew Estate has the best quality control that we witnessed. They are pretty high tech in a low tech industry, using bar coding and statistical analysis. This chart shows the cigars that the first level of quality control people threw out (blue line) and the red line shows the head of quality control and how many cigars he deemed unworthy. Wherever you see a red spike is where the floor level quality control people didn’t catch enough bad product and the head of quality control ended up catching it.
And here he is, the head of quality control:
After passing quality control, the cigars are left in a cool aging room to continue to leech out ammonia and to blend the flavors into the finished product. It should be noted that DE has different rooms for their ACID cigars, JAVA cigars and natural cigars so as to not accidentally infuse some flavor into the naturals.
Now that the cigars have aged, they are ready to package and ship. All of the packaging is done by hand, including label application, box decoration, cellophaning and shrink wrapping (with the assistance of a very small machine)
Boxing up the cigars:
Shrink wrapping the new Acid Tips (Jon Drew on the right):
That’s it! Now you know how cigars are made at D.E. I’d like to point out some of the most interesting things I learned from Jon Drew. His company is very socially responsible. They don’t fire pregnant workers like some other places do, they don’t promote the illegal box trade like I mentioned in an earlier blog, and they are great patrons of the arts, even employing a full time art director, Jesse, who does graffiti art at the factory and around Nicaragua. They are also conscientious of paying taxes to Nicaragua as a way to give back to the country as opposed to trying to skirt them. Every where we went it seemed that employees were happy and well taken care of, but especially so at D.E. I was really impressed by their facility, their hospitality, and mostly, their ethics. I will be a Drew Estate supporter going forward, and I challenge everyone to learn more about their favorite cigar company and find out if they are practicing business in a responsible way. Support companies who do with your business and buy their cigars!
Next blog we’ll cover more pre-industry over at another company I was really impressed with: Don Pepin’s place- from leaf to fermentation.
