How important is the tobacco?

The tobacco is equally as important as the overall construction of a good cigar and both must remain consistent cigar after cigar.

Not only must the tobacco be of consistently high quality, it must also be correctly processed. To maintain consistency in taste and aroma, we must maintain a consistent supply of the same types of tobaccos that go into the blends. Since crop years vary as to the availability of the various types of tobaccos yielded, it is important that we are able to keep a sufficiently large stock of a particular leaf in order to protect against short supply due to drought, heavy rains, too much or too little sunshine, political upheaval in tobacco growing regions of the world, etc. This requires sufficient financial resources, if high quality and consistency are to be maintained. The alternative is to buy leaf hand-to-mouth from whatever becomes available, thus rendering it impossible to keep blends consistent, and possibly subjecting the cigar to inferior leaf.

Unless a manufacturer has the resources to lay in supplies of high quality tobaccos, taste and aroma will vary from year to year, even sometimes from month to month. And, if inferior quality is used, the cigars will produce a harsh, rough, musty taste with an unpleasant, penetrating aroma, the kind wives tend to become so vociferous about.

But financial resources are not enough. A manufacturer must also possess the expertise to know good tobacco from bad when he sees it. This comes only from experience. The best tobacco men today have been in the business for decades and travel the world buying leaf stock for their companies.