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Part Two: Las Vegas Big Smoke Saturday Seminars

Wrapper Leaf

Posted: Wednesday, November 14, 2007

By Gregory Mottola  

Some of the most accomplished wrapper growers in the industry took the stage flanked by Cigar Aficionado editors.

It is often said that the wrapper leaf is the most important part of the cigar-smoking experience. The Saturday morning panel of expert tobacco growers presided over the issue of the wrapper's importance and the difficulty of growing the leaf. On stage was a quartet of accomplished wrapper growers: John Oliva Jr., Nestor Plasencia Jr., Josh Meerapfel and Carlos Fuente Jr., who addressed a crowd of knowledge-hungry cigar smokers. Between the four of them, these growers provide wrapper leaf for an enormous part of the premium cigar industry. James Suckling, European editor of Cigar Aficionado magazine, mediated the panel with senior editor David Savona.

David Savona

"The wrapper leaf that we are going to talk about today is really the most important part of a cigar in a lot of ways," said Savona. "Wrapper is the only thing that you see when you buy a cigar. The wrapper tells you a lot about the cigar, it gives you the first impression. People in the cigar business say ‘consumers buy with their eyes.' The wrapper leaf can make or break a sale. If the wrapper leaf looks gorgeous, silky and beautiful like the one I'm holding here, you just want to smoke it." Savona said, complimenting the appearance of a Toraño 1959 Exodus Torpedo. "See the oils, see the beautiful sheen, feel the texture of the wrapper, and you get the aroma of the cigar. If that doesn't come together, you might just leave that cigar sitting there on the shelf, no matter how good it's going to taste. It's also the most difficult [tobacco] to grow. I know how tough it is because I can't grow tomatoes in my own backyard."

Carlos Fuente Jr.

Suckling raised the question of how much the wrapper leaf affects taste. Carlos Fuente Jr. said that he had always been told by Cuban growers that the wrapper accounts for 40 percent of a cigar's taste, but he believes that it is more like 60 percent, and reminded the audience that even though the wrapper is such a small component of the cigar, volume-wise, it is the most influential in the overall flavor. Nestor Plasencia Jr., a tobacco grower with farms in Honduras and Nicaragua, believes that the wrapper's influence is directly related to the thickness of the cigar. The thinner the ring gauge, he says, the more you'll taste the wrapper's characteristics; he believes that with a corona size, wrapper leaf is responsible for 70 percent of the flavor.

Josh Meerapfel, the premier grower of Cameroon wrapper, stressed the wrapper's delicacy and how cigarmakers should blend tobacco around the wrapper in order for the leaf's inherent flavors to best be expressed.

The cigar panel addressed many of the travails that come with growing wrapper, from adverse climate and inhospitable landscapes to tribal tensions. Meerapfel mentioned how there are 250 tribes in Cameroon who don't want to work together, so everything is grown in small plots of about one and a half acres. The plots are changed every year, keeping the ground fertile, but it is difficult to farm because the region's poverty does not allow for any irrigation system.

John Oliva Jr. (left), Nestor Plasencia Jr. (center) and Josh Meerapfel discuss the challenges of growing tobacco.

"There are no roads, no electricity, no running water, so thanks to you guys, these people have an income," Meerapfel told the audience.

Suckling added: "What's cool is you see Bono and all these guys going to Africa, but these guys through buying tobacco and growing tobacco are feeding 100,000 people, so remember that when you're smoking Cameroon."

Growing cigar tobacco in Honduras and Nicaragua, however, is a very different operation. Nestor Plasencia plants around 4,000 acres a year, 1,500 dedicated to wrapper leaf. He is constantly assessing soil composition, harvesting time and the curing process.

"You can have the best crop in the world, but you can spoil it in one single day if you don't make the right decision," said Plasencia.

John Oliva Jr., who grows much tobacco in Ecuador, cited cloud cover and proximity to the equator as influencing the wrapper leaf that he cultivates.

The stories the tobacco men told led to a greater appreciation for the product.

"Our specialty is growing darker, richer, heavier wrappers," said Oliva. "Different locations on one farm can produce wrappers of the same seed with completely different taste."

This claim is supported by the fact that Oliva dedicates one part of his farm for growing wrapper exclusively for Fuente's darker cigars, and at the same time grows wrapper on another part of the farm for La Gloria Cubana, which typically has a lighter wrapper.

Fuente told the story of how difficult it was to grow Cuban-seed wrapper leaf in the Dominican Republic. Prior to Fuente, no one had successfully grown such wrapper there, and he was told that it could not be done, but he strived to re-create the flavor of Cuban-seed wrapper grown by the Olivas that he had tasted when living in Nicaragua. In the early 1990s, Fuente harvested his first wrapper crop for the Fuente Fuente OpusX cigar.

Oliva got a good laugh out of the crowd when he relayed words of wisdom that his father, John Sr., had imparted to him: "My dad says that if a country is fun to go to, the climate is great and the people are nice, the tobacco ain't worth a shit there."

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