Below are a few videos taken from one of our recent visits to the AJ Fernandez factory in Esteli, Nicaragua. This will give you a little "taste" of what you will experience on a Cigar Adventure!
After fermentation, tobacco leaves are sorted manually, leaf by leaf. Wrappers are sorted into several grades, by stalk position on the leaf, as well as by texture, color and the length of the leaf. This is extremely labor intensive as the wrapper leaf represents the outer part of the cigar and has to be perfect in terms of color uniformity, free of blemishes or tears and it must have fine veins.
Manufacturers want to have wrappers of a specific color for a cigar line, and another color for another line. The supplier has to prepare wrapper in lots of uniform color, classifying the tobacco leaf by leaf. It is not that easy if you consider that you would be very happy to find two leaves that look exactly the same! As the problem must be solved, the sorting is more a classification according to the tone and the brightness of the leaf.
An experienced team of cigar-rollers can produce up to 400 of very good, nearly identical, cigars per day. The rollers keep the tobacco moist — especially the wrapper — and use specially designed crescent-shaped knives, called chavetas, to form the filler and wrapper leaves quickly and accurately. Once rolled, the cigars are stored in wooden forms as they dry, in which their uncapped ends are cut to a uniform size. From this stage, the cigar is a complete product.
Finally, the cigar is ready to be packaged and shipped. Cigars are first given their identity (the Band). A nice band is one of the most important pieces of marketing/selling elements for the cigar. Attractive packaging goes a long way to educating and enticing potential buyers. Next, most cigars are put in cellophane wrappers and boxed or bundled - typically in quantities of 20-25.