Perdomo Factory Tour Recap: One Year Later

A little over a year ago, I had the privilege of traveling to Nicaragua to experience firsthand the farm and factory operations of Perdomo Cigars. This recap features my day-to-day activities on the tour, along with some reflections on my experience.

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Day 1: Arrival

On my flight from Miami to Managua, I quickly realized I was far from the only cigar expeditionary aboard. Apart from Nicaraguans returning home and groups of teenage missionaries, a good portion of the passengers consisted of middle-aged men equipped with Panama hats and well-worn Cubavera shirts—a specific combination of apparel that easily allowed me to identify them as my compatriots.

This connection proved useful upon landing in Managua. Simply sticking with a group of these fellow aficionados after going through customs led me to the Hotel Globales Camino Real, the collective base camp for seemingly all cigar tours before they head north to Estelí. Relaxing by the hotel pool gave me the opportunity to get drinks and chat with others in my group, an almost equal mix of retail owners/workers and cigar fans on vacation. The tropical weather, accompanied by sipping macuás (the national cocktail of Nicaragua), helped put us all in a mindset far removed from the frigid February weather back home.

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Day 2: Bus to Estelí

On the morning of our second day in Nicaragua, my tour group congregated in the hotel lobby and met our guide for the duration of the trip, Arthur Kemper, Vice President of Perdomo Cigars. He briefed us on the four-hour journey to Estelí and handed each of us a humi-pack of Perdomo sticks to enjoy on the bus ready to ferry us north along the Pan-American Highway.

Our ride was nothing more than an old yellow school bus featuring a new coat of paint, but it was well stocked with coolers brimming with Toña, the ubiquitous beer of Nicaragua. Throughout the morning, we sipped and smoked our way through the picturesque landscape of rolling green hills set against a backdrop of distant mountains, along with views of the impressive Masaya Volcano.

We arrived in Estelí around mid-afternoon, the final stretch of driving taking us past a slew of gated properties adorned with signs displaying every major name in Nicaraguan cigar manufacturing, driving home the point that we were truly entering a mecca of premium tobacco.

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Day 3: Farming, Fermenting, Sorting

After a pleasant afternoon and night at Hotel La Campiña, a small family-run operation complete with home-cooked meals, we began our day with a classroom session led by Arthur. His presentation walked us through the entire process of cultivating tobacco plants. Starting with sorting the seeds and progressing all the way to the curing barns, our group left the class with a much better understanding of what it takes to produce a high-quality tobacco leaf for cigar production. I was personally surprised by just how small tobacco seeds are—no bigger than grains of coarsely ground salt.

From the classroom, we boarded the bus and proceeded directly to Finca Natalie, Perdomo’s premier farm in Estelí. We toured the fields and observed workers planting seedlings, priming plants, and hanging harvested leaves high in the rafters of the curing barns. I was shocked to learn that many of the fields in Estelí are tilled using oxen-pulled plows, due to the sandy nature of the soil often making it difficult for tractors to operate.

Inside the curing barn, workers were stoking coal fires in pits dug into the dirt floor, a technique that accelerates the curing process by raising the temperature and lowering the humidity. I thought this might partly explain why barn fires seem to be a common hazard in the cigar industry.

After our farm visit and a quick lunch, we headed to Perdomo’s compound in downtown Estelí, where they house all operations related to the fermenting, rolling, aging, and packaging of cigars. The first area Arthur showed us was the fermentation rooms. Here, we observed the massive pilones of tobacco leaves fermenting until they are ready to be sorted, bale- and barrel-aged, and then rolled.

The pilones consisted of hundreds of bundles of leaves stacked around five feet high. The internal heat generated by the weight of the stacked tobacco and the energy output of the natural fermentation process meant that the internal temperature of the pilones could reach well over 100°F. These high temperatures are crucial in speeding along the fermentation. The air in the room was so dense with nitrates being released from the leaves that our eyes and throats began stinging after just a few minutes of walking around.

Downstairs from the fermentation room, we entered the area where tobacco leaves are sorted for use after they’ve been fermented. This began my personal favorite part of the entire experience, as we got to meet a veritable legend of the cigar industry: Aristides Garcia.

Aristides is a Cuban gentleman in his 90s who was born into a tobacco farming family. Early in life, he began a career in the Cuban cigar industry that saw him eventually rise to become a factory manager. In retirement, he moved to Nicaragua, where he was approached by Perdomo and has been with them ever since.

Aristides oversees the sorting of fermented tobacco leaves for Perdomo, and for each tour group that comes through, he gives a small demonstration of rolling what he calls a “farmer’s cigar.” Gathering around a table, we watched him quickly bunch and roll a toro-sized stick, which he finished off with a pigtail cap. The process took no more than a minute and suitably impressed our group.

He then produced a box of cigars he had rolled in preparation for our tour and handed one out to everyone. Some people saved theirs to put in their humidors at home; I smoked mine that night with a pour of Flor de Caña rum. The cigar was spicy and earthy, complemented by perfect construction belying the experienced hands that had crafted it.

Meeting Aristides felt like meeting a living embodiment of cigar history. Watching him work and hearing his stories left me with a lasting impression of the depth of tradition that has gone into making the modern cigar industry what it is today.

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Day 4: Rolling, Aging, Packaging

Our fourth day in Nicaragua—and the final day of our official tour—began with a visit to a place most of us had been eagerly anticipating: Perdomo’s rolling room. With over a hundred paired rollers and bunchers working in unison, it is a large and constantly busy operation. Arthur explained that the pairs working at each table had, in many cases, been together for years, becoming so well attuned to each other that switching a pair or substituting a new roller or buncher could seriously impede their ability to create a consistent product.

Watching the rollers work allowed us to observe the high level of artisan craftsmanship that is essential in any cigar factory. The best rollers could produce up to three hundred cigars per day, and the precision and care they displayed were unmatched. Inspectors constantly roamed the rolling floor, checking the work at each table to ensure a steady level of consistency.

Throughout each part of the tour at Perdomo, I was continually impressed by the company’s level of quality control and attention to detail, and the rolling room was perhaps the best example of this. Arthur demonstrated this by weighing two separate fifty-count bundles of toros that had been created by two different pairs of workers; the bundles differed in weight by only a few tenths of an ounce. Another way in which Perdomo takes their quality control above and beyond is by draw-testing each and every cigar, whereas Arthur told us factories owned by other companies will only test about one in every ten sticks.

After taking in the rolling room, Arthur led us to a small room set with tables and chairs and told us we were about to partake in a blind cigar taste test. This was another personal highlight of the trip for me. Our group broke into pairs, and Arthur walked us through lighting and sampling Connecticut Shade and Maduro petite coronas while blindfolded, so that we had to rely on taste alone to discern the difference.

Smoking a cigar with zero preconceptions of what to expect was something I had certainly never tried, and it helped me appreciate the flavor notes in an entirely new way. I don’t necessarily recommend smoking with a blindfold on, but it was certainly an experience that helped me better understand my own palate.

The final stop of our tour was the box factory. Like many cigar companies, Perdomo makes their own boxes on site, and their workshop was yet another display of their constant attention to detail. Each box is handcrafted in their wood shop with zero automation, all the way from a piece of lumber to the final product we see on shelves across the globe.

After departing Perdomo’s compound for the final time, Arthur had one last surprise in store for us that evening at the hotel. He provided each of us with a sample of Perdomo’s brand-new—unreleased at the time—Legacy Shade Grown. Smoking the Legacy was, in my opinion, the perfect way to cap off the trip. After having seen the fields where the new hybrid tobacco was grown, and the individuals who had rolled the cigars, I felt a deeper connection with what I was smoking. And it certainly helped that the Legacy is a fantastic cigar, regardless of where you smoke it.