|
After a year of
legwork we discovered
 an ideal combination of quality, price
and consistency from a small, Cuban family-run
factory hidden away in the Cibao Valley
At Cafe
Cito, we have always enjoyed introducing
customers to such discoveries as the Dominican
Republic's premium sipping rums, some of
which are close to cognac in their smoothness and
flavor. Likewise, we have always wanted to
be able to offer a good 'discovery cigar'; one we
could recommend with confidence and sell for a
reasonable price. But for the longest time we
were reluctant to recommend any particular brand,
aware that:
- Almost
all of the famous brand name cigars sold
in tourist shops – Cohiba, Davidoff,
etc. - are knockoffs or counterfeits: you
pay for the name but you don’t get
the real thing.
- Much
of the product available is simply
unknown to the buyer and sold at prices
that don’t necessarily speak for the
quality, and with no way to try before
you buy.
- There
is nothing worse than buying for a
cigar-loving friend back home, only to
find out too late that you have bought
him a box of junk.
We
concluded that there must exist in the Dominican
Republic a cottage industry of highly talented
cigar makers who can make an excellent cigar
and  whose prices reflect
the fact that they are not well known. After all,
there are dozens of cigar manufacturers in the
Dominican Republic. Many have come from Cuba,
others have been professionally trained in
factories located near Puerto Plata that produce
some of the world’s most famous cigars. So
we set out to try to find one of these unknown
talents.
As for the
quality of the ‘smoke,’ our criteria
was simple: the cigar would have to be a
comfortable smoke, meaning an easy draw, a good
burn and a flavor that wouldn’t knock the
bejeezus out of your taste buds. In short, we
were looking for a decent cigar at a decent price
that would be both satisfying for the beginner
and respectable to the connaisseur –
something you take home to father-in-law and he
actually thanks you for it.
The final
criterion for us was consistency in product. One
problem with cottage industries is that a
well-meaning beginner might put out a good
product one day, yet prove unable to keep up with
his own success. We wanted a source that could
provide reasonable assurance that next month,
next year, we could buy the same cigar we enjoyed
before.
As it turns
out we didn’t have to go out looking for
this because it ended up coming to us. One Sunday
a regular client of Café Cito, Robert Daoust,
showed up for a leisurely afternoon lunch with an
associate of his, Don Luis Cuevas.
Robert is a
Canadian businessman who over the last few years
has developed his own brand name, ‘Don
Roberto,’ and started a distributorship out
of Montreal that today spans the country. While
operating on a much larger scale than us, he had
the same objectives; a good smoke, a good price,
consistent quality. Several years ago and after a
few false starts, he found what he was looking
for in Don Luis, a virtual walking cigar
encyclopedia who heralds from the famed tobacco
region of Pinar Del Rio, in Cuba, where his
family’s tobacco plantation traditions go
back three generations.
"The
first thing I remember as a kid is tobacco,"
says Don Luis. "I don’t know anything
else. When we were kids my mother used to roll us
little baby cigars before anybody even knew about
cancer and all that."
Don Luis
has been producing cigars in the Cibao region of
the Dominican  Republic for the
last twenty years. He found his niche in the
anonymous side of the business, that of running a
factory and making cigars for other people who
have their own brand names and distributorships
in different parts the world. Along the way he
also developed his own line under the name Cuevas
Hermanos.
Some very
respectable brand names come out of the Cuevas
Hermanos cigar factory, brands that are well
known throughout Europe, North America and The
United Kingdom. During a visit to Luis’
factory, we leafed through a couple of issues of Cigar
Aficionado Magazine. In each issue, they
publish a rating of different cigar brands in a
single category or size. In this rating system,
anything from 90 to 100 is considered
outstanding, 80 to 89 is considered very good to
excellent. Below seventy means not recommended.
In the issues we looked at, we found at least a
half dozen of the brands produced at the Cuevas
factory; many scored in the high 80’s –
excellent.
"We
have been coming out on those lists ever since
1994," he says.
Considering
that cigars that rate in the 90’s are either
impossible to find or tremendously expensive, Don
Luis’ high-eighties ratings convinced us
that indeed he had a product that promises
consistently high quality.
All this of
course was merely confirmation of what our own
experience had told us when smoking his cigars.
Over a year of Don Luis' occasional visits to
Café Cito, we had tried a variety of his cigars
and also gave several dozen away to our
cigar-smoking clients. Everyone agreed that Don
Luis’ cigars were very well made, burn
evenly and draw nicely. Even people who
weren’t veteran cigar smokers found
themselves, not with a half-smoked cigar in the
ashtray, but puffing away right to the very
end.
And so we have decided not
only to make Cuevas Hermanos the Café Cito house brand, we have
also arranged with Don Luis to provide us with enough stock
to sell by the box. In addition to the traditional boxes of
25, he has  provided us with a sampler five-pack,
each containing a Churchill, Robusto, Lonsdale, Panatela and
a Corona packaged in a wooden box. This package, which sells
at Cafe Cito for just under US$23.00, makes an ideal gift. All
prices work out to about one third of what you would expect
to pay in a tobacco shop back home. We also sell these cigars
by the piece, which makes Café Cito just about the only place
where you can actually try before you buy.
And so, if you are planning to do
some cigar buying while visiting Puerto Plata and don’t
want to be taken for a ride, come on down to Café Cito
for a good dinner, followed by one of the country’s fabulous
sipping rums and an excellent hand rolled Hermanos Cuevas cigar.
Dinner,
and a good cigar!
Check out our special offer
|
