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REMEMBRANCE: CIGARS GODFATHER
Cigars Tycoon Supreme
fnbworld bureau/agencies
Cuba's most famous tobacco farmer Alejandro Robaina died of cancer on Saturday, April 17, 2010 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”.
Our Detailed Cigars Story:
http://www.fnbworld.com/3/5/articles/Feat ures/Cigars:-The-whiff-says-it-all---Sapna-Kashyap /
