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Cash-short Cuba is slashing the amount of land devoted to growing its famous tobacco by more than 30 percent as the global recession and worldwide spread of smoking bans bite into sales of the country's prized cigars.
Demand for Cuba's cigars fell 3 percent in 2008 and earlier was reported down 15 percent in 2009 because of the recession and the smoking bans adopted in a growing number of places as a public health measure.
Cuba's National Statistics Office, in a report posted on its web page (www.one.cu), said land to be planted with tobacco for next year's crop had dropped to 49,000 acres, down from 70,000 acres, which was in turn less than 2008.
It said the coming crop was expected to be 22,500 tons, down from a planned 26,800 tons.
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They're called "cigar-factory readers" and for almost 150 years they have entertained the workers who hand-roll cigars in factories all over Cuba.
The Cuban government has suggested that these unique readers be designated as part of the world's Intangible Cultural Heritage that the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization will vote on, together with another 110 candidates, at a the meeting to be held in Abu Dhabi beginning next Monday. . . .
The readers nowadays are state employees with an enviable status: they read 90 minutes a day and spend the rest of the time preparing new readings or debating with the workers the meaning of what they have heard.
Amid the sweet cigar aromas and standing on a platform with a microphone heard throughout the factory, Jesus Pereira, 44, entertains his fellow-workers by reading to them in three sessions: the first two obligatorily dedicated to the press and the third to novels or self-help books.
It is Thursday and today it is time to read "40 Tips about Sex,"
Washington's 47-year-old trade embargo has kept Cuban products out of the U.S. — but hasn't prevented companies from using the communist island's brand names.
As the U.S. and Cuba consider better ties, such trademark issues would have be settled before any easing of the embargo. The fight between Bacardi and the Cuban government for the Havana Club name already has played out in the U.S. courts and Congress for more than a decade — and is now before Spain's high court. . . .
The thought of competing with Cuba is already keeping executives at Swedish Match North America up nights. The Richmond, Virginia-based company owns General Cigar Inc., which has sold Dominican Republic-made Cohiba cigars in the U.S. since 1997.
"It's not the brand that's going to make the difference, it's whether it's Cuban or not," said Gerry Roerty, the company's vice president and general counsel. And smokers are willing to pay a premium for Cuban, he said.
Cohiba was founded in Cuba to make cigars for Castro and visiting dignitaries. Today it is the flagship of 27 premium brands produced by Habanos, equally owned by the government and Madrid-based Altadis SA, which was acquired last year by Britain's Imperial Tobacco Group PLC.
As President Barack Obama moves to ease restrictions on trade with Cuba, cigar lovers are savoring the prospect of legally lighting up a smoke that has long required a black- market connection and a willingness to flout the law. . . .
The possible end to the 47-year-old embargo on Cuba trade has intensified a legal and lobbying fight between cigar makers Swedish Match AB of Stockholm and Imperial Tobacco Group Plc of Bristol, England. Each wants exclusive rights to sell Cuban-made brands in the U.S., the world’s largest market for premium cigars.
Swedish Match sells cigars in the U.S. made in Honduras and the Dominican Republic under Cuban brand names. It bought the brands from families that fled Cuba after Fidel Castro seized their cigar companies in the 1960s. Imperial distributes Cuban- made cigars under many of the same names to the rest of the world through an agreement with the Cuban government monopoly, Cubatabaco.
“Before serious commerce resumes, this is going to have to be resolved,” said Robert Muse, a Washington lawyer who advises clients on Cuba-related issues.
"If you lift these restrictions, you increase the ability of the average person to interact with the outside world," he said. "Fifty years is long enough." . . . Not every business in Virginia would necessarily benefit from open trade with Cuba. U.S. cigar companies could be seriously hurt if the domestic market ends up being flooded with cigars produced by Cuba's government-controlled industry, said Gerry Roerty, vice president and general counsel at Swedish Match North America.
Chesterfield County-based Swedish Match, which sells cigars from the Dominican Republic and Honduras, wants lawmakers to ensure a competitive market if the embargo is lifted, perhaps by limiting imports of Cuban cigars for a certain time until U.S. companies can access Cuban tobacco leaf.
"We have been talking actively to members of Congress about this," Roerty said. . . .
"For about 50 years now, people have been waiting for the day when they can legally get their hands on Cuban cigars again," Roerty said.
As many as 80 percent of cigar consumers would do exactly that, Roerty said.
"I'm always scared," said Pedro as he deftly twisted large tobacco leaves to make fake famous name Havana cigars in a clandestine workshop in the Cuban capital.
If caught in his illegal workshop, known as a "chinchal," Pedro could face a prison term.
"It's not a business, but a necessity to survive," Pedro said in the dim light of the dilapidated building.
With long-suffering Cuba hard hit by the economic crisis and pounded by two hurricanes last year, the government has stepped up its fight against illegal trade, including in cigars.
Sales in the famous smokes fell 3% last year, according to a report released at a Havana trade show last month.
Sales of Cuban cigars, considered the finest in the world, dropped 3 percent to $390 million in 2008 as the world financial crisis and the spread of anti-smoking laws cut demand, officials said on Monday.
The falling sales reflected a decline in the market for luxury products in general as global economic worries mounted, said Manuel Garcia, vice president of Habanos S.A., the worldwide distributor of Cuban cigars.
Speaking at a press conference kicking off Cuba's annual cigar festival, he said 2009 was likely to be a "very complicated" year, but Habanos expected to maintain sales at around the 2008 level.
The cover of the latest issue of Cigar Aficionado magazine.
Inside, public policy experts outline the history of United States engagement with Cuba and argue for abolishing preconditions if the United States should re-engage with Cuba.
It is an oddly liberal position for a rather conservative magazine. When one thinks of Cigar Aficionado, one thinks -- fairly or unfairly -- of rich, right-wing men puffing away on their Cohibas.
But Gordon Mott, the magazine's executive editor, said it was not out of the ordinary. . . .
Now, "we have a new administration that we, at least, believe has some receptivity to the idea that our Cuba policy needs to be re-examined," Mr. Mott said. "It is a propitious time to raise the question and be very pointed in some of the things that we believe."
Asked if he was worried about alienating some readers, Mr. Mott said he was not. . . .
So is Cigar Aficionado's position that cigars are more important than politics?
"I'd just say cigars bring people together," Mr. Mott said. "They provide a common ground for people to, let's say, maybe, rise above politics.
Castro's regime (and American attempts to eliminated it) prompted the Bay of Pigs debacle, closed off a beautiful country with a vibrant music culture, and -- possibly worst of all -- triggered a 46-year-old trade embargo that has deprived Americans of Cuba's most prized export: its vaunted cigars.
Though Cuban cigars are perhaps the world's most revered, the stogie probably didn't originate on the island. Cigar smoking first took hold elsewhere in the Americas--exactly where and when remains uncertain. . . .
Ulysses S. Grant's cigar habit proved his undoing, saddling him with the throat cancer that killed him. And Freud was a chimney: Patients on his couch had to endure not only running commentary about their suppressed Oedipal complexes but the acrid stench from his 20-a-day cigar habit (which ultimately killed him too).
Despite the obvious health risks, cigars remain a fixture of pop culture. An episode of Seinfeld centered around a box of Cubans, while the stogie's famous champions include Michael Jordan, Rush Limbaugh and Lil' Wayne. Politicians dabble too . . .
Yet Washington is where cigar-lovers looking to enjoy a smooth Cohiba or Romeo y Julieta -- without skirting the law -- can look for hope. President-elect Barack Obama has indicated a willingness to discuss with Raul Castro the repeal of bans on Cuban-American travel and remittances--gestures that could ultimately lead to scrapping the trade embargo. For aficionados, that would be a welcome tonic for the grim times ahead. As Evelyn Waugh said, "The most futile and disastrous day seems well spent when it is reviewed through the blue, fragrant smoke of a Havana cigar."
Hurricanes Gustav and Ike destroyed up to 2 million pounds of Cuba's best tobacco, but reserves of the leaf should cover demand for the island's premium cigars for the next year, a tobacco executive said on Wednesday.
The storms, which struck within 10 days of each other, caused major damage to the tobacco industry infrastructure, which will require a significant investment to repair, said Manuel Garcia, vice president of cigar producer Habanos S.A.
"We think that for at least the next year we should not have great difficulties with the supply of cigars because luckily for us, we have a reserve of raw material," he said at a Havana business conference.
"Undoubtedly we are going to need an important financial injection for the tobacco (industry)," he said.
But when Hurricane Ike blew through Cuba eight days after Hurricane Gustav's pass, Gonzalez, 35, a tobacco engineer/plantation guide at the Hoyo de Monterrey cooperative, joined an intense effort to move delicate tobacco leaves from their drying barns to stronger buildings in hopes of shielding them from the storm's fury.
Even so, more than half the crop was lost, González says. More than 3,000 tobacco leaf drying sheds and 8,600 homes for tobacco workers in the region, which lies about 112 miles southwest of Havana, also were destroyed.
''It was very, very bad,'' he said in halting English.
According to the daily newspaper Granma, Gustav alone destroyed 3,414 curing barns and damaged another 1,590. In a blow to one of Cuba's top exports, more than 800 tons of tobacco products were damaged by Gustav. The hardest hit city was Consolación del Sur, where 1,836 of the existing 1,857 curing barns were destroyed.
The Cuban government estimates losses from the two storms at $5 billion. As the island struggles to rebuild, one of the few crops that can earn the hard currency it needs to bounce back has sustained damages that experts say could linger for years to come. Cuba made $402 million from tobacco in 2007.
Cuba said on Monday more than 90,000 houses were damaged or destroyed when Hurricane Gustav tore through the western province of Pinar del Rio on Saturday with 150-mile-per-hour (240-kph) winds. . . .
The top official of the ruling Communist Party in Pinar del Rio, the main growing region for Cuba's famed tobacco, said more than 4 million pounds (1.8 million kg) of the leaf, already harvested and in warehouses, had been damaged by Gustav, but that efforts were being made to salvage them.
Cuba produces about 80 million pounds (36 million kg) of tobacco annually.
Cubans emerged from their shelters to discover that the Category 4 storm had spared their lives but laid waste to vast tracts of the island's tobacco industry.
Winds of 140mph crashed into the western edge of the Caribbean island where much of the country's vital tobacco crop is grown, toppling telegraph poles and ripping off tin roofs.
Approximately 250,000 Cubans had been evacuated before Gustav crashed into Cuba's Isla de la Juventud before hitting the mainland further north at Pinar del Rio.
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.
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.