The second full day of Estelí got off to a similarly early start as the day before.

I am going to be honest, I had no clue where I was going. I seem to recall that we were supposed to be going to “NACSA / Guadalupe” and  then Tabacalera El Tambor, though our group leader said TAVICUSA and at another point PENSA.

As it turns out, we in fact ended up at NACSA and Guadalupe, more specifically Finca Guadalupe, a farm owned by the Oliva Tobacco family.

It’s a fairly large farm just north of the city with extremely scenic views. We were led around the farm by Steve Saka of Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust, who has cigars produced at Nicaraguan American Cigars S.A. (NACSA).

finca-guadalupe-seedbeds

I’ve long argued that you learn more about the tour you were just on than the one you are currently doing. In the end, the process of making cigars is pretty much the same at a basic level, where all the differences come in is the minutia. Fortunately, having Saka—a self-described cigar geek—giving the tour meant that much of the differences where the focus of the tour.

finca-guadalupe-seeder

We spent five minutes taking about the machine above. It’s a seeder, the machine that places seeds into the cups that will become seedlings. Saka described the difference between this and palleted seeds, another method of planting. In short, the farm prefers using this machine because it allows them to plant raw seeds, as opposed to palleted ones which are wrapped in a casing. The advantage is that seeds can be stored for significantly longer times.

finca-guadalupe-door

While there was a ton of great scenery, there was not much tobacco in the barns. Planting in Estelí seemed to be a bit later compared to last year and there was diminished sunlight, which is expected to produce smaller plants then in years past. In fact, at Finca Guadalupe the only tobacco in the barns was there as a demonstration for us, though it seems like by the time you are reading this, harvesting is likely underway.

After a quick one hour tour, we headed over to NACSA. The original NACSA factory is just down the road from the new building. That factory, known as Nicaragua American Tobacco S.A. (NATSA), was started in 1995 by Juan Francisco Bermejo with partners including Lew Rothman, the former owner of JR Cigar. Two years ago, the factory moved to its new building as part of a lot of changes. In prior years, the factory made cigars exclusively for JR Cigar, meaning it was focused almost exclusively on inexpensive cigars. The company decided to make a change to begin making more premium offerings. It hired Raul Disla to oversee production and attracted clients like the Asylum brand and Saka’s Mi Querida.

Because of the nature of our schedule, we largely skipped the tour of the factory and instead had a hands-on activity with Saka. All of us were given a chaveta and a few pieces of tobaccos and we rolled puritos, small, rough cigars that are used to test and taste one type of tobacco in a factory.

Saka wanted to show the difference in characteristics between various primings. It was certainly one of the more enjoyable tours I’ve been on, largely because of how interactive Saka made it.

Just before noon, we boarded the bus and headed to lunch at one of the A.J. Fernández farms. As in years past, the festival served lunch in a barn that had been set up just for our dinner. It’s very cool—both visually and temperature-wise—though you have to be careful to not run your head into some of the crossbeams in the barn. Also, the particular barn that we were in was extremely modern, probably the nicest barn I’ve ever been in.

I then left my group and head over to Tabacalera Oliva de Nicaragua S.A.—of zero relation to the aforementioned Oliva Tobacco—to see some of the changes that have been made. I’ve written about the factory numerous times and  ended up actually giving part of the tour.

As I mentioned earlier, production of Flor de Oliva has been moved to STG Estelí. But that’s just the start of the changes. Oliva is reorganizing its factory and I’m told that by the end of the year, the layout and feel will be much more modern and a bit more spacious.

From there, it was back to our hotel. Patrick and I were both on the 7 a.m. flight out of Managua, meaning we were taking a bus at 3 a.m. to the capital. As such, we both had to pack in addition to getting ready for the gala dinner.

It was once again held at the cafeteria at Drew Estate II. This year was even nicer than the last year, including some flame throwers at the walk-in, passed hors d’oeuvres and a very good band. Oddly, there was no auction and unfortunate, no signing of “Guantanamera” by José “Pepín” García.

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Charlie Minato

I am an editor and co-founder of halfwheel.com/Rueda Media, LLC. I previously co-founded and published TheCigarFeed, one of the two predecessors of halfwheel. I have written about the cigar industry for more than a decade, covering everything from product launches to regulation to M&A. In addition, I handle a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff here at halfwheel. I enjoy playing tennis, watching boxing, falling asleep to the Le Mans 24, wearing sweatshirts year-round and eating gyros. echte liebe.