Puro Sabor 2024: Day 4

Day 4 of the 2024 Puro Sabor festival came early, mainly because the party on Wednesday night went pretty well into the evening, and that was without joining some folks at Famous, a bar that is part of Real Estelí’s soccer stadium that is known for staying open until the wee hours.

As far as the agenda, visits to Rocky Patel’s farm and factory were on the agenda before lunch at Plasencia Cigars S.A. and then my first trip to Victor Calvo’s factory and facilities. It wasn’t the first time I’ve been to the company’s property, as it hosted Day 3’s dinner and party as well as several lunches during previous festivals at one of its farms that is just outside of Estelí.

The day began with a bit of news after we met up with Rocky Patel and Amilcar Perez at Finca Villa Cuba, a farm that grows tobacco for many of Patel’s cigars. While we were getting an introduction to the farm, Patel shared news that he would be opening a new factory not far from where we were standing, a facility that would bring all of the company’s Estelí operations under one roof and give the company the capacity to produce nearly 60,000 cigars per day. Patel said that the first shovels will go in the ground in May, with completion expected in 18-24 months.

With that bit of news shared with the group, it was off to follow the journey of cigars from the time they are seeds to the time they are smoked, meaning a start in the farm’s nursery, then off to see some plots of tobacco at various stages of growth, then to the curing barn and the first round of fermentation. The company started growing tobacco on the land back in 2014, and Patel recounted stories of how those first crops were stronger in flavor than expected due to the 170 acres being virgin soil.

Once the farm activities were completed, it was off to a storage facility in town for a quick look at tobacco waiting to be used, and then finally to Tabacalera Villa Cuba S.A. (TAVICUSA), where the company produces some of its higher-end and more premium lines. While there is a second rolling room that we didn’t get to see, the building felt much the same as it did when I visited it several years ago. For a company as big as Patel’s, this is a rather small operation, and much like Fábrica de Tabacos Nica Sueño, almost every square foot of the building is actively being used.

During the tour, Patel showed off his recently released Conviction line, known for its $100 per cigar price tag, as well as the Sixty line and an upcoming release that will celebrate the Year of the Dragon. Patel closed out the tour by giving each visitor a Conviction cigar as well as a sampler of cigars made at the factory. He also showed off renderings of the new factory, which I was under the impression would also be making an appearance at the dinner that night, but didn’t from what I saw.

Then it was off to lunch at one of Plasencia Cigars S.A.’s facilities in what feels like one of the centers of tobacco growing in Estelí. The site has held lunches consistently over the years, so it was a familiar feeling to be back, with Nestor Andrés Plasencia greeting people as they walked in and providing a welcome prior to lunch being served.

During the meal, the Cámara Nicaragüense de Tabacaleros (CNT), or in English, the Nicaraguan Chamber of Tobacco, made a donation of $7,048.50 to Escuela Cristal, a non-profit that provides educational and therapy services to children with special needs in Estelí. The money donated will be put to use with the foundation opening a new physiotherapy center.

After lunch, it was time for a short drive up the road to Victor Calvo’s quite large operation, one which I knew little about besides the fact that it seems to have the tallest security gate in the city.

The roots of the company date back to 1996 and Costa Rica, though the company moved to Estelí in 2001, with Victor Calvo Sr. taking over operations in 2002 as his former business partner found he didn’t really like the city. Calvo is still very much involved with the operations of the company, but we were greeted by Victor Calvo Jr., whom I had met last year on a visit to one of the company’s farms for the first group lunch of the festival. The younger Calvo is an immediately likable person who was upfront about the company’s operations right from the start.

As we stood on the facility’s main drive, dwarfed by four large buildings on one side and two more on the other, he put it bluntly—pun intended—that the company is primarily in the short, flavored cigar business for the most part, producing 650,000 of those style of cigars in the buildings around us. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see inside those buildings, as it’s seemingly a guarded secret as to how those cigars are made.

So instead, we saw two facilities next to those factory buildings, one a curing barn for tobacco coming in from fields that the company rents in the area, the other a sorting, fermentation, and processing facility. Definitely informative, and it earned the company the award for the most amount of space a tour group didn’t get to see.

With that portion of the visit over, we headed into the city to the factory where the company produces its premium handmade lines. Once off the bus, the aroma of espresso and chocolate brownies wafted through the air, emanating from another one of the company’s facilities across the street from our destination, and again, one we wouldn’t be visiting.

The factory we did get to see was fairly similar to others, with a rolling floor and packaging area on par with that of Nica Sueño, Villiger and TAVICUSA. While the company’s main business is in the smaller flavored cigars, it also produces traditional premium cigars as well as larger flavored cigars, including the NUb Nuance and M by Macanudo lines, among others.

During the tour, we got to smoke fumas of two of the tobaccos the company uses, one a corojo filler leaf and the other a criollo, so that we could taste what could be considered to very core flavors on their own as well as in combination with each other to show how tobaccos come together in a blend.

On the list of things I hadn’t seen elsewhere—or at least can’t remember seeing—there was a trio of workers at one of the rolling tables, which immediately caught my eye and made me think there was some sort of training going on, but instead, they were sharpening some of the cortaboquillas used by the rollers. You’ve probably seen them in photos, but these are devices used by the rollers to cut the finished cigar to the specified length, and essentially the last step in the process before the cigars are picked up for quality inspection and then heading to the aging room. Given that tobacco carries oils and can leave debris, keeping these devices sharp and in good working order is important, and one of those things that probably often goes overlooked by many visiting a factory.

After returning from the factory visits, we had about two hours to rest, get cleaned up and dressed up for one of the best-known parties, the white party, where everyone is asked to dress in white clothes in celebration of the festival, the harvest, the new year, pretty much whatever you want to tack onto these kinds of events. Once again, this year’s festival was held at the J.C. Newman PENSA factory, home to the Brick House and Quorum brands, among others.

In terms of the grandeur of the week’s dinners, this may be the first one to really go big. Costumed dancers greeted attendees as they entered, the space felt just a bit more dressed up than the previous nights, and there was more in the way of entertainment as two groups of musicians and dancers performed, one representing the culture of the eastern part of the country, the other representing that of the western and central parts, the latter of which includes Estelí. There was also a band playing a mix of Latin and American music, and a post-dinner DJ, as well as welcoming messages from Enrique Sánchez of 1502 Cigars, who included one of his cigars for attendees to smoke, and Cesar Ramirez of Cigar Box Factory Estelí, which produced a gorgeous 10-count box celebrating the company’s 10th anniversary and offering some of the best cigars from over the years of the Puro Sabor festival.

During the event, Eric Newman, president of J.C. Newman Cigar Co., was surprised with a lifetime achievement award presented by the CNT and set up by a video narrated by his son Drew, which you can watch here. The video does a great job telling the story of how Newman has been part of the premium cigar industry for more than 50 years. After it played, he thanked the Nicaraguan cigar community for welcoming him, his family and his company and noting how rewarding it has been to be part of the growth of the Nicaraguan cigar industry.

The night wrapped up with more music from the performers before a DJ took over a bit after 11 p.m., which felt like it may have been a bit late to get the White Party really rocking, but some folks stayed around, dancing into the next morning.

Now it’s on to Day 5, which will have me up early as we’re being picked up at 7:45 a.m. for a trip to some of Plasencia Cigars S.A.’s facilities. It’s likely the biggest operation in Nicaragua that I have yet to see, so I am excited to finally check that one off my list. I’m not exactly sure what all we’ll be seeing, but I’m excited all the same. The final lunch of the week is being hosted by TAVICUSA, so I’m expecting that Rocky Patel will be announcing his new factory. After that, attendees get about a four-hour break to get packed up to return home as well as for the final gala dinner to close out the festival, which will be held at Oliva’s Las Mesitas facility that I visited earlier in the week. If last year was an indicator, this year’s party should bring several hundred members of the cigar industry together for a sizable party to wrap up the 2024 Puro Cigar festival.

Be sure to follow both me and halfwheel on Instagram for more updates throughout the day.