by David “Doc” Diaz

Santiago in the Dominican Republic is, arguably, the “mecca” of the world’s cigar producing cities. Though Havana may have the romantic edge in the cigar game, the Dominican Republic has been at the forefront in cigar manufacturing innovations and is one of the largest tobacco-producing nations in the world.

Below: Doc and Hendrik Kelner Jr.

My visit started on the morning of January 17, 2008, when I was introduced to Hendrik Kelner, president of the Tabadom company, makers of Davidoff, The Griffins, Avo, and several others. I was also introduced to Eladio Díaz, Director of Quality Control, and to Hendrik Kelner Jr., son of company president and one of the administrators of the company. Hendrik Jr., has been part of the cigar manufacturing business since he was old enough to walk. He is a real student of the industry and I was very impressed with his command of every aspect of the cigar manufacturing process.

Hendrik was my guide and tutor for my day at Davidoff. He started by offering me a cigar, an unbanded experimental blend, as it turned out. Then we hit the trail to tour the massive facility, which contains three separate rolling galleys, and has a cafeteria and box factory on the premises.

Davidoff, in my opinion, is in a category all by itself. It’s not just the size of the factory, because I’ve seen other large factories, but it’s the operations and the quality control. I was impressed by the quality control. There are more supervisors in the Davidoff factory than I’ve seen anywhere else. They’ve got a supervisor in the rolling galley stationed at about every third table. These supervisors make an initial check of the finished cigars and pull out and note any rejects. Then, the cigars are taken to another station where another control person checks the cigars. Then the cigars are measured and weighed, which constitutes yet another check of the cigars.

Below: The Davidoff Rolling Galley

After looking at how the cigar blends are put together, and after touring the fermentation rooms and two of the three rolling galleys, I was invited to lunch with Hendrik and the assistant to the president, Catherine Llibre, who told me about the upcoming ProCigar Festival in March. This is the first annual event, which will allow everyone, including consumers, to tour the farms and factories of General Cigar, Davidoff, La Aurora, Matasa, and many others. (Information can be found at http://www.procigar.org/

After lunch, we stepped into the Davidoff rolling galley. This is the largest of the three rolling galleys. I was able to meet some of the supervisors who told me about the rolling, sorting, and quality control processes. Davidoff uses a computerized control system to accurately keep track of all product that is manufactured. Whether good product, or rejects, all must be accounted for and rejects are tracked to their source rollers who can be instructed and/or retrained to improve the quality of their output.

Below: Supervisor Checking the Quality of Davidoff Cigars

One of the differences between Davidoff and some of the other factories that I’ve visited is that Davidoff only uses draw-testing machines on very thin ring gauge cigars. All of the regular gauge cigars are checked and rechecked, all by hand. Given Davidoff’s reputation for producing quality sticks, I attribute their ability to maintain such high quality to the sheer number of quality control supervisors who together represent numerous check stations to weed out poor product.

Cigars that are poorly constructed are referred to as “rejects.” Rejects are first broken in half, and then are thrown into a large box. At the end of the day, the wrapper leaves are stripped away. These will be sold to companies who will use them for chewing tobacco. The filler in the rejects will be sold to companies for use in machine-made cigars. Pretty high quality machine-made smokes, if you ask me.

I spent a good part of my afternoon trying out experimental cigars. Eladio Díaz has the enviable job of testing new blends. His desk is piled high with wheels of cigars, which he proceeds to pluck out one-by-one,  trim, light, and smoke throughout the day… sometimes two at a time. The task of creating new blends is very time consuming and requires testing many different blends. Though the master blenders can tell you what characteristics each tobacco type has, they cannot predict how the tobaccos will mix until they actually blend them together and smoke them. It is a time-laden, trial and error process, and one that I would LOVE to try my hand at for a few weeks, if not months.

Perhaps the highlight of my day came when I asked a question that I often ask cigar manufacturers. “How much does the wrapper contribute to the overall flavor of a finished cigar?” The answers have varied from manufacturer to manufacturer. But Hendrik Kelner Jr., who has studied this question at length, had a sensible approach. Hendrik told me that the real answer is: “It depends…” He said that, on the average, the answer would probably be around 40%, with some cigars being affected more or less than that average, depending on the individual factors. The factors that have the most influence on how much a wrapper leaf will contribute to the overall flavor of a cigar include, size and tobacco blend.

For example, a cigar’s ring gauge plays an important role. A smaller ring gauge (RG) cigar has a higher percentage of wrapper to filler. There’s just about the same amount of wrapper leaf in a small RG vs. a large RG cigar, but definitely less filler. Obviously the wrapper in a thin gauge cigar will contribute more to the overall flavor than the wrapper in a thick gauge cigar.

Also, the part of the tobacco plant that makes up the filler blend contributes greatly to the difference. The tobacco leaves at the top of a plant, are thicker, have more resins and have a stronger flavor. If more of the filler tobacco is comprised from leaves from the top of the plant, then that will reduce the effect of the wrapper. But, if the cigar blend uses more tobacco from the lower part of the plant, which has a less penetrating flavor, this will allow the wrapper to assert itself more.

Below: Doc Studying the Effect of Wrapper Leaves on Flavor

The same is true of the wrapper leaf. If the wrapper comes from the top of the plant, it will have a greater impact on the overall flavor, compared to a wrapper from the lower part of the plant.

Now, that makes a lot of sense to me and, had I left at that point, I would have had a better understanding of how a wrapper affects the flavor of a cigar. However, I wasn’t done yet. Because Hendrik was just getting started.

He designed an experiment to demonstrate how the wrapper leaf affects cigar flavor. Here’s what he did. He called down to the factory floor and asked one of the supervisors to bring up a three identical cigars, but with three different wrapper leaves. The cigars were identical, in ring gauge, length, filler and binder, but had different wrapper leaves. They took the wrapper leaf off of two of the three cigars and replaced the wrappers with two different ones.

The cigars that were chosen were cigars with a fairly mild blend. The first cigar, with the original wrapper, which was a Connecticut Shade grown in Ecuador, exhibited a grassiness and a light spice. The second wrapper, which was a hybrid of Cuban seed and Connecticut seed also grown in Ecuador, had a rich tobacco sweetness and had a medium spice. The third cigar wrapper was a Cuban seed grown in the DR. This cigar was very full in spice and had woody flavors. All three were really different. I never expected that the differences would be so dramatic. I was thoroughly impressed with the experiment and the results. But, as it turned out, we still weren’t done yet.

Hendrik called back down and ordered up two more cigars. These were identical cigars again, but this time they had the same wrapper leaf. The wrapper leaf, however, was taken from a different part of the plant. One was taken from a higher part of the plant (the 5th priming), and the other a lower part of the plant (from the 2nd or 3rd priming). Again the differences in flavor were substantial. The cigar with the wrapper from the lower primings was light, grassy and had some light spice, while the cigar with the wrapper from the higher priming was full-flavored with rich tobacco sweetness and full in body. Once again, there was a big difference, attributable only to the difference in wrapper leaf. Absolutely amazing. This experiment was the actual proof that the wrapper leaf contributes hugely to the flavor of a cigar.

I will not soon forget my trip to Davidoff. Though I had a certain respect for Davidoff prior to my visit, I can tell you that my respect has now flown off the charts. This is a quality company that sets a high standard within the cigar industry.