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Looks like it will be close, but no giant cigar, for Cuba's stogie-rolling king Jose Castelar. The 64-year-old former world-record holder has teamed up with five assistants, using nearly 93 pounds (42 kilograms) of top-quality tobacco to assemble a 98-foot (30-meter) cigar.
Castelar set Guinness Records for the world's longest cigars in 2001, 2003 and April 2005, when he completed a stogie measuring 20.41 meters, just shy of 67 feet. On Tuesday, he said he is shooting for a fourth title.
But Castelar, who learned the art of cigar-making from an uncle at age 5, is likely to fall short this time: Guinness says Puerto Rican cigar-maker Patricio Pena crafted a whopping 41.2-meter (135-foot) stogie last year.
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Jose Castelar began rolling cigars when he was five. Now, at 64, the Cuban expert hopes to finish rolling a 20-meter (65-foot) stogie by Wednesday to garner his fourth world record from the Guinness Book.
"I can't tell you exactly how far I'll get, but my goal is to beat my former record of 20.41 meters (66.9 feet)," Castelar, knicknamed "Cueto," told AFP on Sunday.
He rolls his mega-cigar out of premium tobacco leaves, making a long, slender tube about 4 centimeters (1.6 inches) across. He works non-stop, eight hours a day since he began his record-seeking attempt on Saturday.
HAVANA: Looks like it will be close, but no giant cigar, for Cuba's stogie-rolling king Jose Castelar.
The 64-year-old former world-record holder has teamed up with five assistants, using nearly 93 pounds (42 kilograms) of top-quality tobacco to assemble a 98-foot (30-meter) cigar.
Castelar set Guinness Records for the world's longest cigars in 2001, 2003 and April 2005
I know how this sounds, but I live in Havana and I don't smoke cigars. I'm clueless about them, actually. Even the cutting thingy that trims off the tip is a mystery. . . .
That's why I decided to embark on a cigar crash course, learning what makes Cubans some of the finest cigars in the world.
"If you're interested in cigars, we're already friends," says James Suckling, Cigar Aficionado Magazine's "Man in Havana." . . .
I smoke the Cohiba under a shade tree in Old Havana's stately Plaza de Armas. It has the strongest smell of any cigar I've sampled. It's easily my favorite, with a hint of coffee and an electric-metallic taste that leaves my tongue feeling numb, perhaps from the nicotine. . . .
My crash course is over and I'm still not sure what cigar fans mean when they say things like that. Guess it's time to buy some more cigars and find out.
Communist Cuba is opening up unused land to private farmers and cooperatives as part of a sweeping effort to step up agricultural production.
Government television says 51 percent of arable land is underused or fallow, and officials are transferring some of it to individual farmers and associations representing small, private producers.
The president of Cuba's national farmers association, Orlando Lugo, says "everyone who wants to produce tobacco will be given land to produce tobacco," and it will be the same for coffee or anything else.
Since becoming president on Feb. 24, Raul Castro's government has dropped some restrictions on daily life. Cubans can now: . . . Cultivate unused state land with cash crops such as coffee and tobacco.
The introduction of new disease-resistant tobacco varieties and more extensive areas under irrigation areas are some of the measures Cuba is currently applying to increase tobacco production.
According to authorities linked to production and research, tobacco outputs have considerably increased in the last few years, while better results are expected from a raise in payments to tobacco producers.
Casa del Habano of Partagas will welcome cigar fans from around the world at its 16th Encuentro de Amigos (Friends´ Meeting).
A release says the April 21-25 meeting includes a field trip, a tour of Cayo Levisa, in western Cuba, and a closing gala.
I am sitting across from the Malecon, smoking a Cohiba, drinking a Cristal and staring with across the bay with more than a decade´s worth of wide wonder at the Morro Castle Lighthouse.
And for once, I´m at a loss for words.
I'm not one to be struck breathless, but for more than 15 years, I have wanted to see this place, visit the world where Hemingway walked the Earth and time stopped 49 years ago. Now that I'm here, it's hard to describe it. . . .
A contingent of us from the South Carolina Press Association are here on a study trip, a chance to see this place so close, yet so far from the United States. We are staying at the Hotel Nacional . . .
Back when Jimmy Buffett was a poet, he wrote a song called "Havana Daydreamin'", and the last verse begins: "Ceiling fans stir the air, cigar smoke doth swirl."
He could have been talking about this place.
There's not much to report yet.
ON an island where folks normally don't buck the system, Zudlay Napoles is breaking an unwritten rule: she is a woman and she smokes cigars.
Not only does Napoles love to light up her favorite Romeo y Julieta No. 4: the diminutive 31-year-old has become the face of Cuba's cigar industry for countless international visitors.
In doing so, Zudlay Napoles has confidently charged into this man's world, pursuing a passion that requires her to endure the stares when she smokes.
She is a sommelier at La Floridita, a restaurant that supposedly served Ernest Hemingway's favorite daiquiri and is now a tourist spot.
As Raul Castro moves to raise living standards, welcomes new foreign investment in mining, oil, tourism, possibly agriculture and even ethanol, opportunities will open up, said the executive, but only for non-U.S. companies.
European, Latin American, Israeli and Arab investors already have a foot in the door in Cuba in the cigar, rum, citrus and hotel industries. With no American competition to worry about, they are looking at a windfall when U.S. sanctions are eventually lifted. . . .
The increased consumption longed for by Cubans will benefit European companies already producing goods in Cuba, such as ice cream and soft drinks by Nestle, beer by the world's second largest brewer InBev, soap and shampoo by Anglo-Dutch giant Unilever, and cigarettes by Brazil's Souza Cruz, a subsidiary of the British American Tobacco group. . . .
Cigar maker Habanos, half owned by Britain's Imperial Tobacco since it took over Franco-Spanish cigarette manufacturer Altadis, is expected to double sales the day American smokers can buy its premium hand-rolled cigars.
Which companies are best poised if Cuba moves toward capitalism?
MarketWatch.com likes Herzfeld Caribbean Basin Fund (CUBA), which has investments in companies that could take advantage of a freer Cuba. MarketWatch also says Imperial Sugar Co. (IPSU) could benefit if the ban on investment in Cuba is lifted. And with Havana only 90 miles from the U.S. mainland, Carnival Cruise Lines (CCL) could see a boost.
Over at Stockerblog.com, an interesting play is Altadis (ALTDF.PK).
HAVANA -- On an island where folks normally don't buck the system, Zudlay Napoles is breaking an unwritten rule: She is a woman who smokes cigars.
Napoles doesn't just love to light up her favorite Romeo y Julieta No. 4. The diminutive 31-year-old has become the face of Cuba's cigar industry for countless international visitors.
In that way, Napoles has confidently charged into this man's world, pursuing a passion that requires her to endure the stares when she smokes. . . .
As Napoles put it: "The Cuban cigars, since their formation, are in the hands of women. They are built with the muscles of women. In reality, they already have the female heat, the female touch. Now all that's left is overcoming this taboo of smoking."
She is a sommelier at La Floridita, a restaurant that supposedly served Ernest Hemingway's favorite daiquiri and is now a tourist spot. In this capacity, Napoles helps customers match each cigar with the perfect after-dinner drink.
it seems likely that illness and age will finally be allowed to accomplish what two generations of Cuban exiles have been unable to, despite obsessive zeal and the help of the American government. For a quick and entertaining roundup of their attempts, Sundance Channel is offering the well-timed American television premiere of “638 Ways to Kill Castro,” a 2006 British documentary being shown Monday night. . . .
The more freakish ideas — the poisoned fountain pens and milkshakes, the exploding seashells and cigars — are mentioned in passing, but the focus is on traditional methods like guns and bombs
The tradition of the Cuban cigar and its related art and history are being discussed Thursday in conferences at the 10th World Habano Festival in Havana.
Today's agenda includes conferences by experts on interesting issues like the architecture of tobacco factories, women's participation in production and history and a conference on how to roll a cigar.
As part of this stage, a group of Cuban academics linked to cigars talked with participants of the quality of the island's cigar and its cultural values.
Musicians like Leo Brouwer and Chucho Valdes, actors Jose Antonio Rodriguez and Rogelio Blain, and painter Nelson Dominguez, all of international prestige, attended the talk. . . .
Brouwer, musical arranger, composer and orchestra director, said he started smoking cigars at the age of 10