Cuba's Cigar Czar
Robaina Dies
fnbworld bureau/agencies
Cuba's most famous tobacco farmer Alejandro Robaina has died of cancer on Saturday, April 17 at age 91, confirm media reports from Havana.
Robaina was part of a
family that has been growing tobacco for four
generations in San Luis near Pinar del Rio in
western Cuba.
The man of cigars was the
only Cuban to have a cigar brand named after him,
died Saturday from cancer after doctors discovered
inoperable tumors on his lungs and kidney, his
grandson Hirochi Robaina said. Robaina is widely
credited with maintaining the quality standards of
Cuba’s legendary cigar tobacco even after
the communist revolution 50 years ago. Havana
cigars have remained the world’s most highly
sought and expensive.
Robaina convinced
revolutionary leader - and famous cigar enthusiast
- Fidel Castro that tobacco growing should remain
in private hands, an exception on the socialist
island that has not changed. The tobacco farmers
sell their production at pre-set prices to the
state, which produces and sells the famous Cuban
luxury good worldwide.
The room is lined
with photos of the late Robaina examining
dark-green tobacco leaves ready for harvest,
walking his fields, smiling with a golden-brown
cigar between his fingers and, of course, dragging
on a stogie amid a thick, white smoke, says a DPA
report.
Robaina's family began planting
tobacco in San Luis in 1845, after immigrating
from Spain, and he took up cigars when he began
working the family fields at age 10 —
eventually smoking for 81 years.
For
decades, cigar aficionados have visited San Luis
to see Robaina. Even though the dirt road to his
farm has no name and there are no street numbers,
everyone in town knows the way.
Strutting roosters, stray dogs and goats wander
the road and the only indication that you've found
the farm's collection of weather-beaten wooden
barns is the large, red-and-green lettering
attached to one roof reading: "Plantation El Pinar
Alejandro Robaina."
Until his last
days, Robaina could often be found sitting on his
porch, puffing on a cigar. Even though Fidel
Castro's 1959 revolution nationalized many large
farms, Robaina was allowed to keep his land, but
began producing tobacco for the state. In 1997,
the Cuban tobacco monopoly Habanos SA
unveiled a brand named in his honor, Vegas
Robaina.
His grinning, heavily wrinkled
face appears on the boxes. Today, a box of 25 of
the brand's finest cigars can go for between $300
and nearly $500.
Hirochi Robaina said
his grandfather always said the most important
element in growing top tobacco is not the seed or
the climate, but the soil. He always maintained
"The land is everything”.
