The "Final" word please?!

[spiridon]

MrDiver, myself and some others have been enjoying the past several days on a "cigar holiday" in the Tampa area with a historical walking tour thru Ybor City as one of the highlights. We learned MANY historical facts that most of us were not aware of......a VERY interesting tour to say the least. One of the points made during this tour was the "fact" that Cuba does indeed import a certain portion of the tobacco for their cigars from other countries such as Ecuador, Nicaragua, etc....
I know this has been debated back and forth for a while, but wanted to bring it up for discussion here. The tour guide we had stated that he actually saw tobacco leaving the port of Ecuador headed to Cuba......Soooooooo does anyone here have any further insight on this??? Just Curious.

[big ben]

I have no idea, but WHY??? would Cuba do that?

[grtrx]

if they are doing it, some thoughts... to make cigarettes, or to stretch the supply or what they have so they can make more cigars since cigars are one of their few exports

I've also been told several times that cuban tobacco makes it into cigars that ar made in countries other than cuba... not sure about that either

great story and certainly one to stimuate conversation

[gui_tarzan]

Well now wouldn't that be interesting to know? It's possible Cuba has turned some of its land over for growing other crops. Have some of the fields been over-utilized and are no good for growing tobacco now? Are some CCs being sold with non-Cuban tobacco because of the recently reported degradation in quality?

Like Jeff said, the conversations could be interesting.

[fvfanmc]

Originally Posted by gui_tarzan

Well now wouldn't that be interesting to know? It's possible Cuba has turned some of its land over for growing other crops. Have some of the fields been over-utilized and are no good for growing tobacco now? Are some CCs being sold with non-Cuban tobacco because of the recently reported degradation in quality?

Like Jeff said, the conversations could be interesting.

If Cuban is using imported tobacco, might as well just buy domestic cigars.

[Mad Dawg]

Paging ElkTwin...paging ElkTwin. Mr. ElkTwin please pick up the white courtesy phone.

[grtrx]

anyone know the year by year cigar production out of cuba? and the tons of tobacco raised?


I ean, if there had been a drop in quality you might be able to argue that maybe they were diluting their cigars, but.... wait... just a minute...

[Briandg]

If they are importing tobacco, there is only one reason. As elkie said follow the money.

Two possibilities come to mind. The first is that they are buying ecuadorian filler for fifty cents a ton and selling it for ten bucks an ounce in cuban cigars. With a limited crop of cuban tobacco, you can only make a limited number of cuban puros. If you slip 10% of "enhancement" into a cuban puro, you can increase the volume of production and also decrease price (maybe) and increase margin.

The other possibility, is that imported tobacco has nothing whatsoever to do with cuban export puros. There have always been cigars for local distribution, right? cigars made only for the locals, that are not valuable enough for export, and distributed to the peasants?

If you were going to make peasant fumas, you would use the worst of the crop, the floor sweepings, etc. If necessary, you would import stuff from anywhere so you could export all possible tobacco out at $5 and more an ounce in cigars.

You only make money by absolutely maximizing the return on your investments. Investing in tobacco means selling it at as dearly as possible.

[Herf]

Ecuador would most likely be wrappers not filler. I've heard rumors of tobacco leaving Nicaragua for the ISOM but I've never seen any proof.

[Briandg]

Originally Posted by Herf

Ecuador would most likely be wrappers not filler. I've heard rumors of tobacco leaving Nicaragua for the ISOM but I've never seen any proof.

I realize that, it was just a figure of speech.

Of all things, they will never use foreign wrapper they would most likely just hand out filler bunches. I expect that theyalreadyblenda bunch of the cigars with different lots of tobacco, the nic tobacco would just be a single leaf from another bundle.

I agree, Nicaragua would bea likely source. As long as the Cuban stuff could could mask it, almost anything could be used, I guess.

But, I think that this is like the Kennedy assassination. If it was happening, there would be no mystery. Thetruthwou,d escape.