Description: The Dominican Republic grows and hand-rolls some of the best cigars in the Caribbean. There are cigar plantations and factories throughout the country, but while in Santiago, I visited the E. León Jimenez and La Aurora cigar operation. We spotted the yellow house after we parked our car in the lot and walked into a small room where eight staff members were rolling cigars. Their manager was dancing merengue in the front of the room to entertain the workers, so we had to disturb him from his self-celebration to get our mini-tour. (If he doesn’t dance for them, someone else sits on a podium and reads the day’s newspaper out loud for everyone to hear and catch up with current events while rolling. He told us that horoscopes are included, too.)
Guillermo León started to run the show in the 1990s, when the cigar boom in the United States began. His great-grandfather, Eduardo León Jimenes, opened the factory in 1903 but it has been noted in Cigar Aficionado magazine that the family has been in the business several generations before because they all grew tobacco. Today, the entire León empire is run by family members.
The La Aurora cigar brand—now just Aurora—did not begin until the 1960s when Dominican dictator Raphael Trujillo died. Before his death, the government did not allow anyone to start a cigarette business because he was a partner in the lone cigarette factory in the country. The León Jimenes cigars were originally called Imperiales and they were all wrapped in Cameroon, African-raised wrappers known for its spicy flavor and sweet aroma. Because of a shortage of these wrappers in the 90s, the company picked the León Jimenes brand to be wrapped in Connecticut-shade wrappers, a silkier type with a milder flavor. The two brands now attract different cigar fanatics.
When E. León Jimenez opened its cigar business, they also started partnerships with companies like Philip Morris. But the cigar business came only second for the León family. Back in the 1980s, the family’s Bohemia Brewery acquired the largest brewery in the country which also produced the Presidente beer, the leading brand in the Dominican Republic market. They now export the beer all over Miami, New York and Puerto Rico.
We only spent a few minutes watching the staff hand roll the cigars but what a wealth of information we walked away with! After you pay RD$50 for your tour—about US$1.50 at the RD$31=US$1 rate—make sure you go across the street and claim your free Presidente beer. The entire tour all boils down to savoring a beautifully made cigar and enjoying a cold glass of lager—my kind of lazy afternoon.
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