A VISIT TO TABACALERA A. FUENTE: PRE-INDUSTRY, CIGAR ROLLING, AGING ROOMS, PACKAGING, BOX FACTORY AND A RETROSPECTIVE

[El Presidente]

 

JULY 1, 2024 BROOKS WHITTINGTON CIGAR LOCATIONS,  FEATURED

 

A VISIT TO TABACALERA A. FUENTE: PRE-INDUSTRY

Pre-industry — This is usually the longest part of the process and probably the most impactful one. The time in between the curing barn and the tobacco being rolled is pre-industry. Over the course of years, the tobacco will undergo fermentation, aging and lots of sorting. At any point, things can go catastrophically wrong, but this is typically the part of the journey that separates the good from the bad.

 

LINK:  https://halfwheel.com/tabacalera-a-fuente-y-cia-pre-industry/439596/

 

[JohnS]

A VISIT TO TABACALERA A. FUENTE: CIGAR ROLLING

For those who have been to multiple cigar factories, much of what you see below will be familiar. Almost everything surrounding the familiar is probably unfamiliar. 

While there are factories larger than Tabacalera A. Fuente y Cia Planta No. 1, I’ve yet to see one designed like this. While most similarly-sized factories use large rooms with hundreds of bunchers and rollers, this factory has 16 rolling rooms ranging from eight pairs to 56 pairs.

Nearly every room in Planta No. 1 has a story, but some rooms exist to tell a story.

LINK: https://halfwheel.com/a-visit-to-tabacalera-a-fuente-y-cia-cigar-rolling/440074/

[JohnS]

A VISIT TO TABACALERA A. FUENTE: AGING ROOMS

Trademark, Arturo Fuente.

It’s most evident in a long, narrow and remarkably quiet hallway. Far away from most of the action at Tabacalera A. Fuente y Cia Planta No. 1 are the places where most of the cigars rest. In the last year or two, the company has taken a different approach to its aging rooms. When the newest rolling areas were built, new aging rooms were built nearby. The theory is the same as it is in pre-industry: reduce the travel and you reduce the potential for damage. But most of the tens of millions of cigars that the company rolls every year are brought to this hallway, where they are placed inside one of these rooms.

LINK:  https://halfwheel.com/a-visit-to-tabacalera-a-fuente-aging/440147/

[JohnS]

Halfwheel have added three more excellent features of visiting the Tabacalera A. Fuente Factory this week-end. These have been added below to the original three articles which were published at the beginning of this week and were featured above.

A Visit to Tabacalera A. Fuente: Packaging

It’s a factory of contrasts.

Inside the aging rooms, the cigars can spend multiple years in relative isolation, darkness and near complete silence but once they are deemed ready, they’ll head to the packaging area of Tabacalera A. Fuente y Cia, it’s crowded, bright and chirping.

This second-story walkway is a great reminder that unlike some of the newer, palatial factories of Estelí and Danlí, much of the factory is an older building that has been expanded many times and will probably be expanded many more times in the future. While not very high up in the air, the sky bridge exists because a hallway couldn’t go on the ground level. Beyond the utility, it also provides a view of a small road as well as a courtyard for the workers. It’s a unique spot because you can see workers both inside and outside of the factory. Like a lot of this part of the factory, it’s decorated, with the highlight being the frosted glass.

Follow the area above, go down a ramp, and you’ll be led to a room where roughly 100 people are tasked with taking naked cigars and turning them into the finished products you’ll see at your local store.

LINK:  https://halfwheel.com/a-visit-to-tabacalera-a-fuente-packaging/440263/

[JohnS]

A Visit to Tabacalera A. Fuente: Box Factory

Across the street from Tabacalera A. Fuente y Cia Planta No. 1 is a very different-looking building. With “Don Carlos” written on the side of the exterior, there’s no confusion as to whether this is a Fuente building, but it doesn’t look like any of the other Fuente buildings in the Dominican Republic.

Welcome to La Gran Fábrica de Cajas, the big box factory.

In early 2018, the Fuente family broke ground on this 69,000-square-foot facility, located directly across the street from the office entrance of Planta No. 1. Carlos Fuente Sr. never saw this facility; he passed away more than a year before the groundbreaking. Given the personality of Fuente Sr., he may have not been a fan of the grandness. Despite those potential objections, there’s no doubt he’d be proud that the company grew to the size that something like this was needed. Prior to its opening, Fuente had another box factory located in the same complex. It was smaller, slower and certainly less impressive than this massive building.

LINK:  https://halfwheel.com/arturo-fuente-gran-fabrica-de-cajas/440310/

[JohnS]

A Visit to Tabacalera A. Fuente: A Retrospective

During my newspaper photojournalism days many, many moons ago, I was taught that a number of things were needed to create compelling—and more specifically, genuine—moments, but two aspects were perhaps the most important: time and access.

The first is fairly self-explanatory: after all, you can’t capture a moment without physically being in the location where that moment occurs. I can’t tell you how many times a wonderful moment was ruined because I was stopped from being in the exact place I needed to be. It is an extremely frustrating experience to know I could have captured an amazing moment only to be stopped by physical restraints, red tape or someone who just did not understand what I was trying to achieve.

However, time is almost as important an aspect for a couple of different reasons. Assuming that you are photographing in a documentary style—that is, you are shooting situations as they occur in real-time and not posing people to do things exactly the way you want them in order to get a specific photograph—you have to have time to learn how the people and situations react, time to allow a moment to develop on its own. Think of it like a surfer waiting for that perfect wave to ride: they can let any number of smaller waves pass by before they know the perfect one is on top of them.

LINK:  https://halfwheel.com/a-visit-to-tabacalera-a-fuente-a-retrospective/440492/