Guest Photo Essay: Rocky Patel’s Honduran Cigar Operation

[Editors’ Note: The following is courtesy of Chris Verhoeven, a South Carolina-based friend of StogieGuys.com who went on a dream vacation.]

Last month, through my local B&M, I was lucky enough to tour the Rocky Patel Premium Cigar Company’s operations in Danlí, Honduras. And while anyone who went on this amazing adventure would agree that the pictures can’t fully convey how spectacular the trip was, today I’ll try to do just that with just those.

It all starts at the field of dreams. It’s amazing how tall these plants get and it’s humbling to walk out and see nothing but tobacco across the horizon. The company lets a few plants flower to harvest and test the quality of the seeds, but most lose their flowers early on so all the nutrients focus on the leaves instead.

Here in the tobacco curing barns, Nimish, the VP of operations and our gracious host, shows us how the tobacco leaves are sewn onto the sticks and hung to cure.

Although it is a multi-step process involving these piles as well as rooms I can only describe as saunas, I found the tobacco fermentation procedure to be the most interesting. The leaves are wetted and piled creating heat on the inside. The temperature must be watched carefully and the leaves must be rotated to prevent the tobacco from burning and losing its flavor.

While seco, viso, and ligero tobacco are known to come from distinct primings (when the leaves are harvested they pick two per week starting at the bottom, and each pick is called a “priming”), gray areas do exist. These women use sight and feel to sort the leaves appropriately. Females are employed exclusively in this process due to their softer hands and superior color vision.

Finally, after years of curing and aging, the tobacco reaches the rolling tables.

I was truly amazed at how many quality control checkpoints Rocky Patel cigars go through. This draw tester is one of those checks. Cigars must fall between 35 and 50 on the gauge…the one I rolled was a 20!

Spanish cedar is the wood of choice at the box factory to ensure the cigars are kept in the optimal environment.

This photo, taken with Uptown Cigars owner and trip sponsor Israel (far left) and Nestor Plasencia, captures one of the trip’s most memorable moments for me.

The whole trip is a blast, evidenced by this snapshot of me drinking by Rocky’s guest pool. I sincerely hope you get to experience this fun for yourself. Rocky does about 30 of these per year through tobacco shops that sell his products, so be sure to check out your local B&M for a chance to take the trip of a lifetime.

–Chris Verhoeven

photo credit: Stogie Guys