A relative went on a mission trip there and brought me some cuban cigars.
Can’t say much other than they aren’t as good as Honduran ones.
Both Cuban and Virginia tobacco are of a variety that was originally discovered in Honduras in the early 1600's and brought to Virginia. The native Virginia tobacco was harsh and unsmokable. There was no native Cuban tobacco. What is called Cuban tobacco is Honduran tobacco grown in Cuba.
Agree. Communists can f**k up anything.
ML/NJ
There’s tons of fake Cuban cigars out there, even (especially) in Cuba. Unless they came from an official state-run store, God only knows what’s in ‘em.
Any smart cigar producer moved out long ago. I recommend you try Dominican, many of the old growers moved there.
Cuba really screwed up their tobacco industry.
For one thing tobacco really sucks the nutrients out of the ground.
When we were growing tobacco we let a field “rest” at least three years between tobacco plantings. From tobacco the field would go into clover for hay for two years. Then a year of corn then a year or two of oats.
We let our best plants top out and produce seed that we harvested for the next year.
In Cuba they didn’t rotate the crops properly, didn’t save the best plants for seed and didn’t properly amend the soil with fertilizers and lime.
Why? Because the people who knew what they were doing fled to the US.
Combine that with typical communist top down planning, communist worker indifference and the communist government need for cash NOW and you have a perfect storm for failure.
The best cigars now come from central and south America.
I know a man who speaks very highly of the cigars from Brazil. He’s given me a few and they are great but out of my price range.
I had dinner with a couple of Canadians who had gone there. They said they wouldn’t go back, that the place was basically a sh*thole. One guy told me that a local approached him on the beach, said he was starving and begged him to bring him some food from the hotel buffet.