Cuban cigar artisans?

[Peter11216]

Hello All,

I just read, with great interest, several discussions of the Quai D'Orsay line. Piggy had some sort of Joycean epiphanic experience recently, and laficion, some time back, posted an interesting account of the origins of the Quai D'Orsay.

One of the things that laficion mentioned, only in passing, was that Quai D'Orsay was supervised by two people in particular: "The blend is still carefully watched over by two important persons at the RyJ factory, Rodolfo Amaro and Arnaldo Ovalle, Quality control and head of production."

I'm curious if others can provide good sources for learning about individual personalities, esp. w/r/t blending in the Cuban cigar industry.

In the non-C. world, to which some of us are restricted, there are hundreds of brands. Some internet retailers I've looked at carry between 200 and 300 brands, or at least brands with different and allegedly distinct lines. However, there are not that many blenders who take credit for creating the blends. A few blenders are credited with two dozen or so lines, for example. It isn't exactly clear to me how the business works in this respect, but it does seem that some blenders have built up a reputation for putting out certain flavor profiles. And there seems to be some expectation that if one likes something by a particular blender, it is worth a shot trying his (I'm not aware of any women) other offerings, even when produced under a different brand.

What is the story in Cuba?

Thanks,

Pete

[Colt45]

Though perhaps not exactly what you're looking for, here are a couple of links to get you started:

Link 1

Link 2

If you haven't already, it might be worth taking a little time to peruse the Classic Posts forum.

[laficion]

Pete,

What's important to know about the Cuban process of blending and about the master blenders

compared to the NC blenders is that in Cuba, blending tobacco doesn't have the same meaning as for NC

blending.

Blending for NC's is a question of different tobaccos from different countries of origin, where as in

Cuba, it's a question of tobacco coming from different regions of the same country, Cuba does not use or

imports any other tobacco from any other country.

Also, in Cuba, there's no STAR SYSTEM for just one person or persons, it's a joint effort style when it comes

to a blend for a new vitola . For the rest of the regular productions,It's a matter of keeping the blends of

each Marcas as close as possible to the original recipe which in itself is not an easy matter because of the

changes with new tobacco plants and hybrids with better resistence to different tobacco molds and diseases.

Here is some info on the blending process in Cuba, thanks to the cigar wiki site.

http://en.cigar-wiki.com/Cigar_Manufacturing

I hope that this can help you on your quest for info on a very complicated process completely different from

NC cigar makers.

Guy

[MrGlass]

Colt, Guy - thanks for the links. It was an interesting read.

The more I read about this stuff, the more incredible I find these sticks to be.