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Back under the Palms: Miami Revisited

It was January 2025, and I had the urge to go away. It had only been a couple of weeks since my Christmas trip to Cyprus but I suppose I felt like I needed something exciting to kick off the new year. A friend had been to Miami a few months prior and was sharing with me what a wonderful trip it was, and so I decided I would go for the weekend.

Miami, and particularly Miami Beach, and even more particularly South Beach, is not unfamiliar to me. I visited there countless times and I lived there for a year, back when a certain presidential election had the world focused on South Beach and its hanging chads and just before 9/11 when travel between the two countries was a little easier. I’m not going to retell what brought me to Miami in the first place all those many years ago, or why I stayed, or what I got up to there, but there are a lot of good stories.

I loved Miami. There are a lot of reasons to not like Miami and a lot of those reasons resonated with me when I lived there, but I really think it’s a very special place and I have very fond memories from there.

As much as I love it, I hadn’t been back in many years. Not since 2007 (that’s when i started this blog and there is an early Miami Beach post here). My sister moved to Los Angeles, and the boy that I loved moved back to New York and almost everyone else that I knew there then moved away or died, and I just hadn’t been back in many years.

Time to change all that.

I flew to Miami and landed midday and took an Uber to South Beach. As soon as I got there the smell was overwhelming. That way where you smell something and you are instantly transported to a time or place. The way that when I smell decaying apples in orchards in the autumn it smells like my youth, or for some reason Giorgio Red perfume in the autumn smells like London, but there’s a smell that South Beach has, created by the heat and the humidity and unidentified sources that I’ve never smelled anywhere else. I was so happy to be back.

I didn’t really have a plan. I just wanted to wander around my old neighbourhoods and see how they changed and just see what things were like, and of course I wanted to check out the cigar scene. I did both of those things. What I didn’t do was I didn’t go to the Wynwood Arts District or to the new Institute of Contemporary Art there, neither of which were things when I lived in Miami. I wanted to go, but I simply ran out of time. I’m already certain that I’ll have to go back again before too long.

South Beach

I feel like a lot of people might roll their eyes at South Beach as a place to visit. I certainly did before I ever went there. And it is a place of vapid beach-goers and party people, criminals, wannabes, retirees and the people that prey on them. But I love it. And to be clear, I don’t like the beach at all, and I don’t enjoy parties. I don’t really fall into any of the other categories either, but there’s just something very special to me about South Beach. Maybe it’s because it’s the first place that I ever experienced a subtropical climate or saw that many palm trees. But I still think it’s kind of magical. The weather is always perfect, and it’s such a great place for walking and bike riding. And then there’s the architecture. This perfectly preserved Art Deco architecture that is so sweet and charming; little apartment buildings two-three stories tall, in pastel hues with Art Deco lines and little insignia of seahorses and flamingos built into the doorways. Like little pastel cakes. I never get tired of it.

And because the weather is perfect and because there are all these charming postcard-perfect hotels and restaurants, almost every eatery has a patio. And sitting on that patio and ordering, admittedly massively overpriced coffee, and watching people go by while smoking a cigar is maybe one of my favourite diversions. Because of the beach-goers and the party people and the wannabes and the plastic surgery addicts, little dogs, weirdos, muscle-heads, gold-diggers, misfits, and people from all over the world in Miami for a fresh start (or running from something), South Beach is just top-notch people watching. And yes, the patios are cigar friendly.

And then there is that Cuban influence, in the food, the music, the cigars, and the friendliness; it feels special. It doesn’t even feel like you’re in America half the time. I’m not even a fan of Cuban food or Cuban coffee but I love hearing the music and smoking the cigars and generally being around Cuban culture.

It’s underrated, but Miami has a pretty good arts scene. I think a lot of artists from New York migrated down there or go back and forth, or maybe it’s the multicultural aspect of it, or the annual Art Basel art fair, but there are some good art galleries and museums down there. Back when I lived in Miami I was much more dialed into that scene, but it’s worth it to seek out some good art galleries down there. And I don’t mean the awful paintings depicting Ocean Drive or tropical fruits, I mean the people that are doing the kind of art that puzzles the viewer or causes them to say I can’t believe they get paid for that. I visited The Bass, a small but satisfying art museum showing interesting contemporary art. Since it’s small and in South Beach, I walked down there and enjoyed the visit.

So much of what I wanted to do in South Beach was just walking around to places that I knew. I was delighted that so much of it looked exactly the same. Ocean Drive was unchanged. The residential streets generally looked the same. All the heritage buildings remained intact and the roads looked the same. It could have been 2000 all over again.

Even some of the main commercial streets looked familiar. Many of the businesses had changed, but not all of them. My favourite little pizza place Pizza Rustica was still in business. A couple of classic dive bars like Mac’s Club Deuce were still operating, and most of the hotels were the same. I saw ads for strip clubs that I visited back in the day and was pleased to see that some of them were still in business. All of this filled me with intense comfort and nostalgia as I walked around and was flooded with memories.

But not everything was the same in South Beach.

There were fewer cigar places. Maybe just two proper lounges, both of which were new from when I lived there, but there was neither the number of cigar lounges or stores that there was in my day.

The only thing that really bothered me, was seeing what had happened to Lincoln Road. Lincoln Road is a mostly pedestrian thoroughfare in South Beach that, when I lived there, was my favourite place in South Beach. It was lined with cute little local shops and restaurants and cafes, a cigar store, a bookstore, a theatre – all delightful and charming. The street was lined with palm trees and had quirky little fountains and seating areas down the middle bit. When I first moved to Miami Beach, I lived with my sister a block off Lincoln Road and it was where I started and finished every day, enjoying a cigar and the New York Times drinking coffee or having a bite to eat. It was peak people watching and after I had been there for a while it was always the place where I would run into people that I knew.

Lincoln Road has fallen on hard times. The road is still there and the trees and the quirky fountains, but with one exception, all of the old businesses have gone. Most of the storefronts are empty and boarded up and the ones that are open are just boring mall stores selling sneakers or capsule coffee or bath bombs. It’s lost all its local charm. Even the restaurants and cafes are different. The Van Dyke Café, which was my absolute favourite place for my morning coffee, is now a big brand sneaker store. Very sad. The only exception was a little Italian restaurant called Spris, that I used to go to sometimes for pizza. It’s still there and looks exactly the same (right down to the flowers on the tables) and, yes, I went there for a pizza. But it was sad to see what’s happened to the rest of the street. (There is a Miami New Times article here about the closing of the Van Dyke and the changes to Lincoln Road.)

On a positive note, however, when I was there the Sunday flea market was still operating. On Sunday morning people from all over South Florida would come to Lincoln Road and put out their wares for sale. This is a quality flea market. I would say the vendors are largely split between middle-aged gay men and older Jewish women displaced from New York. Both delightful to talk to and everyone has quality things for sale. An Art Deco tea set? A full length fur coat? Mid century modern furniture? They’ve got everything. It’s the perfect way to start a Sunday in South Beach.

Another thing that had changed was Española Road. Another pedestrian street in South Beach, but this one very short and narrow. I remember that back in the day it had a couple of little cafés on it and was quite charming. A true hidden gem. Well, hidden no more, Española was shoulder to shoulder with people and lined with packed restaurants. That was fine, but what I was excited about is that there’s now a bustling cigar store / lounge / restaurant there: Española Cigar Bar & Lounge. A little pricey, but a wonderful place to have a cigar and cocktail. I went there twice in two days.

I rode a bicycle down the paths along the length of the beach and felt the sea air, just as I did in the past. Heavenly.

So overall, I was amazed at how much South Beach was exactly what I remembered. Just a couple of small changes and still one of my favourite places on earth.

Miami & Calle Ocho

Leaving Miami Beach, however, things were very different. Downtown Miami, when I lived there, was a place to be avoided. It was a place where you would change from the bus to the train if you were heading to some other part of South Florida, and you wanted to do it as quickly as possible at night because it never felt safe. Well those sketchy neighbourhoods are now replaced by massive high rise apartment buildings and high-end financial district companies. It is completely unrecognizable. This time there were two reasons for me to visit downtown Miami; one was to change from one bus to another as I visited Calle Ocho, and two, there is a very classy cigar lounge in that district (Empire Social Lounge (Brickell Location), as one would expect in a financial district, and I went there and had a cigar and a martini. But what a change; seriously, it’s just a completely different place.

Calle Ocho, or Little Havana, was certainly there when I lived in Miami and I went there to visit some cigar factories, my first cigar factories, and buy cheap cigars, but it wasn’t really a place to visit otherwise. Well it has leaned into its Cuban culture and now attracts busloads of tourists there to browse around, but it seems no less authentic. If anything, it’s better. For countless blocks down 8^th Street in Little Havana there is business after business selling cigars. Some are just cigar stores selling a collection of non-Cuban (New World) cigars, but many of them have their own brands and rollers and it was incredible to be able to go into all these little shops and sample their house brands before moving on to the next. All along the way were little restaurants serving Cuban food and playing Cuban music, and with cigar ashtrays on the tables out front. I was in heaven. Honestly it felt a bit like I was in Cuba. The domino park is still there where old Cuban men get together and play dominoes, gossip, and enjoy the odd cigar. Some things never change.

I had an incredible weekend in Miami revisiting familiar places and discovering new ones. Although some things have changed, I was happy to see that it is still, in most respects, the place I remember. And I still love it.

I’ll be back.

But my next trip would take me much farther south, to Argentina.

Nicaragua

Two Days in Colourful Granada

Leaving Estelí for Granada

I left Estelí, Nicaragua early on Friday morning. I left the way I came, in a private care instead of on the bus. Friday was a working day for me, and I couldn’t afford to spend half of it in transit, so I hired a driver. The trip took about 2.5 hours. Not a bargain, price-wise, but worth it

Arriving in Granada, I was immediately charmed. This was the colourful city I’d seen in pictures, and it was the city in which I had planned to spend my entire week, before the lure of cigars and tobacco farms took me to Estelí. We arrived in Granada at about 8:00 AM. I would leave two days later. Two days was enough time in Granada.

*main square as seen from my hostel window*

The Poshest of Hostels

I was staying at the Selina Hostel (since changed its name to Socialtel Granada); it was an absolute delight. It’s one of those fancy hostels that feels more like a hotel than than it does just a regular hostel (a poshtel). It is pricier, but you can’t argue with the quality. I had booked a private room, and it was gorgeous. The common areas were full of people hanging out, drinking smoothies and beer, planning day trips to volcanoes, and chit chatting in aesthetically appealing surroundings. As a side note, I did plan to do a day trip to a volcano but it just wasn’t happening while I was there due to volcano activity so I just hung out in the town.

I spent Friday morning sitting on the patio in front of the hostel having a cigar and working on my laptop. With work done, I went out to explore for the weekend.

Wandering Granada

Grenada is one of those places that doesn’t really have tourist attractions per se, it’s really that the city itself is the attraction. It is a gorgeous Spanish colonial town with the oldest architecture dating back nearly 500 years. The buildings are brightly painted, and the streets are cobblestoned. In the centre is a leafy square presided over by a tall bright yellow church.

I know, it’s a lot of photos, but its is just so pretty

It has an active street life, with markets, people playing dominoes, food and drink vendors, add a selection of horses and donkeys.

The central market was an explosion of colours, smells, and fruity goodness.

It is an ideal place for wandering with no destination.

The only downside to Grenada was that it was blisteringly hot and humid. It was hot in Estelí but in a comfortable sort of way. It was so hot when I was in Granada in February that at certain points I felt like I couldn’t see. No matter, the city had an ample assortment of charming cafes and breezy courtyards that I could sit in to take respite from the heat and drink a refreshing beverage or a coffee.

And that’s basically what I did in Granada: I wandered around, I looked at buildings, I took pictures, and I had and I had tasty (non-alcoholic) beverages.

*smoothies, coffee, and a virgin passion fruit colada*

One of the great things about being Granada was that there was a variety of food. It reminded me a lot of Antigua, Guatemala in the sense that it really does cater to tourists and so it has charming cafes with good assortments of vegetarian food. I was in heaven I was able to have vegetarian dishes and nice salads without getting sick. The downside of this was Granada is not particularly cheap. You’re going to pay almost Canadian prices for the pleasures of those lovely cafes. But I was fine with it.

Smoking Cigars in Granada

Of course I smoked cigars. There was one small cigar factory in Granada: Dona Elba. It’s tiny, as their main factory is in Estelí, but there were people in there rolling cigars and cigars were for sale. I made a point of going there and tried a couple of their locally rolled cigars, each of which was only OK. I sat in a rocking chair in their shop area and smoked this very unfortunately named cigar when I was joined by the tired wife of a cigar curious tourist who sat down to talk to me. It was one of those conversations that started normal but then took a turn when this woman, who was from America, began telling me about her COVID conspiracy theories and how Muslims are ruining Europe. Awkward. I obviously don’t agree with her theories and there’s just no point in debating some people. At that point I miss being in Estelí where almost no one spoke English.

*A nice little factory with unremarkable (and one unfortunately named) cigars*

One other note on cigars, don’t buy any here unless it is from a proper cigars store (and even then be careful); Granada was full of egregious fake cigars – not just fake Cubans, but fake non-Cubans, like Padron, Fuente. Nasty looking things, some with beetle holes.

In the evenings I sat outside enjoying the less hot air and smoking cigars, well the people from the nearby hostels marauded about in search of drinks.

It was all perfectly pleasant and was an excellent end to my time in Nicaragua.

Heading Home

I flew home via Mexico City where I had a ten-hour overnight layover. Normally, when flying through Mexico City I’ll go into the city, but I had no desire to go in the middle of the night sleep couple hours and come back to the airport, so I booked a ‘room’ at a little pod hostel just outside of the airport. (izZzleep.) Literally outside the door of the airport and up a flight of stairs. It was my first time staying in one of these little space age pods and I loved it. Great use of my time and money.

Nicaragua was a success I felt fulfilled and rejuvenated.

My next trip would keep me in the Americas: a short jaunt to southern California.

Nicaragua

At Home with Plasencia Cigars in Estelí, Nicaragua

After Las Villas and Rocky Patel, my next cigar factory visit was Plasencia. I was delighted. I had only learned of Plasencia the previous year when I was working in Antigua, Guatemala. The proprietors of the best lounge in Antigua (Antigua Cigars) told me the story of the Plasencia family and introduced me to their cigars. They have been in regular rotation for me ever since.

The Plasencia family started out in the industry in the mid 1800s as tobacco farmers in Cuba after the Plasencia patriarch immigrated there from the Canary Islands. They left during he revolution in the early 1960s and moved their operation to Nicaragua. In the 1970s the turbulence in Nicaragua caused them to move to Honduras where they started making cigars for other brands. In the 1990s they returned to Nicaragua and became one the of the most famous and prolific growers and producers (still for other grands) of the cigars outside of Cuba. In 2017, the family decided to start producing cigars under their own name and the Plasencia brand of cigars was born. They are excellent cigars, the Alma Fuerte being my favourite.

I love how they have been in the business for generations and how they have innovated to grow certified organic tobacco and developed way to grow the crops with less water. They are committed to environmental practices. I should say here that no was is paying or asking me to write this. I’m just a fan.

So I was delighted when I was invited to tour the Plasencia factory in Estelí.

I walked to the factory from my hotel. Long and hot, but manageable. I didn’t want to deal with taxis.

I entered the impressive yellow building and was met with my host.

He took me on a tour of the factory. I won’t go through the steps involved or how this experience enlivened my already deep-rooted passion for cigars, as I have done that in the Las Villas and Rocky Patel posts. I was walked through the same, incredible process of cigar fermentation, rolling, aging, testing, and finishing. All by hand, as it has been done for centuries.

The family’s history is told in a series of photos and the story displayed on a wall after entering the building.

A few things surprised me about Plasencia. It isn’t just a company where these people work; they pride themselves on being a responsible employer. (Take note, corporations.) They pay a good wage, they provide health care onsite, they provide free pre-school for the children of workers, they grow food and use it to supply meals to their workers…it was apparent that this is a company that cares. I usually cringe when I hear an employer calling its workplace a family, but there was a true sense of that here. The walls were lined with quotes from writers and thinkers like Emerson and there were displays about the Plasencia baseball team and about the importance of mental health. It was impressive, and not what I expected. They even make a point of employing blind people in certain jobs where the task can be done by touch. I came in as a fan of the cigars and left as a fan of that and their corporate culture.

The tour ended in their onsite cigar lounge / café / bar, where I had a coffee and cigars and continued to chat with my host.

I left, with a nice gift bag, and my host insisted on driving my back to my hotel. (He thought it was crazy I had walked.) When he turned on his truck, 1980s Madonna blasted from the speakers. “The radio?” I asked curiously. “No. It is a CD,” he replied and said how much he liked Madonna. Full of surprises, down to the final moments.

These three cigar factory visits were incredible. I felt even more zealous about this thing that I love and that has, truly, shaped so much of my life. It was also a reminder of the kindness and generosity of cigar people and how, despite being strangers, we connect over this shared passion.

What a great way to end my week in Estelí. The next day I would leave Estelí for Granada.

Nicaragua

Farm to Factory with Rocky Patel

During my week in Estelí, Nicaragua, and the day after my visit to the Las Villas cigar factory I had the privilege of visiting the Rocky Patel farm and factory.

Rocky Patel is a brand started in the mid 90s by a Hollywood lawyer named Rakesh “Rocky” Patel who became passionate about cigars and sold his law practice to start a cigar company. This is a story that is close to my heart. Today Rocky Patel is one of the best known non Cuban brands in the world.

Factory

The people at Rocky Patel were unbelievably generous with their time. I was met by a representative of the company, a girl named Gissell who spoke excellent English, and she took me on a tour of the factory. She walked me through the entire process from rolling the cigars to aging them, banding to boxing them. I was familiar with the process, and it was fresh in my mind for having visited the factory yesterday, but I appreciated seeing how the Rocky Patel factory operates.

It was a big operation, but like all cigar factories, things are pretty simple. It’s a room with long wooden tables, divided into sections, kind of like cubicles in a library, and a person sits at each one and does their job. There’s the person who bunches the tobacco, creating the blend, the person who rolls the tobacco, the person who takes the cigars and puts them into a wooden cigar press to help them hold their shape, the person who applies the wrapper (which is the outside leaf), and the person who takes each cigar and puts it into a little machine that puffs air through it to check to see if it is rolled correctly. If the cigar is rolled too tight you can’t smoke it easily, and if the cigar is rolled to loosely it burns too quickly and too hot. The man who does the testing keeps track of whose cigars or not meeting the standard.

rollers

We also visited the room where women de-vein the tobacco leaves, the and the room where men are sorting the cigar leaves into bundles to make the blends, weighing them, and keeping the records. Everything is done by hand. Pen and paper.

The factories are warm. There are fans but you can’t have air conditioning blowing on the tobacco. Tobacco is a sensitive product that needs to be kept warm, but not too warm; and humid but not too humid.

The atmosphere of the room is nice. People seem to be having a good time, or as much as you can while working. A lot of them have headphones in but others are chatting with each other as they roll cigars, but they are working quickly. A perfect marriage of speed and precision is desirable. I tried rolling a cigar once and I know first-hand that it is not as easy as they make it look.

After the cigars are rolled, they are aged in bundles on shelves for anywhere from a few months to up to a year before they are boxed and sold.

When it is time for the cigars to be boxed, there is someone whose job it is to separate the cigars into different shades of brown, to ensure that when you buy a box of cigars there is a uniform colour of the cigars in the box. This is purely for aesthetics. The lighter coloured cigars go with the lighter coloured cigars and the darker with the darker coloured cigars. In Cuba, it is said that they separate the cigars into 40 different shades of brown. I don’t know if that’s accurate or if it’s true in Estelí, but the man who was doing the colour organizing certainly had a lot of different shades of brown on the table in front of him.

The cigars are banded, again, by hand, and put into boxes for distribution and sale.

Just as with the day before, I felt amazed by the level of work that goes into making each cigar and how little it has changed over the centuries.

When the tour of the factory was finished, we were joined by Luis, a former lawyer himself, and we took a drive out to the farm.

Farm

This was a new experience for me. I had visited a tobacco farm in Cuba, but at the time the plants had been harvested so it wasn’t much to see. Being at the Rocky Patel farm in Estelí, I was giddy with excitement. It was stunning. The header image on this post is a view of the field. Bright green plants against a clear blue sky. It looked like heaven.

I wandered to the fields and took pictures and gently caressed leaves like a real weirdo.

Another thing I hadn’t seen before, was tobacco flowers. These are the flowers that grow on the tobacco plant. They’re pink! I had no idea.

Right near the fields, were large barns where the tobacco goes after it’s harvested.

Once the leaves are harvested, they go into the barn where they are hung on wooden rods high up into the barns rafters. When they’re hung up, they’re green and as they dry, they turn brown. The racks of leaves are rotated to ensure that they all get uniform humidity and exposure. As with every other aspect of cigar production, this is all done by hand. Women string the tobacco leaves into long garlands; men take the tobacco leaf garlands up into the rafters and hang them over the wooden beams. The barn smells incredible.

They told me that once a year they have fancy dinners in the barn where they bring in a large table and eat and drink surrounded by tobacco. I tried unsuccessfully to wrangle an invitation.

We then visited the building where the tobacco was put into, effectively, big piles, where it ferments for up to a year. The tobacco must be kept at a very stable state of humidity and temperature, and it is monitored constantly.

Finally, and a bit out of sequence, we visited the greenhouses where the little tobacco seedlings start their lives. Future cigars. I have never been so excited to visit a nursery.

The people at Rocky Patel were so wonderful. Explaining to me the entire process, tolerating my ceaseless enthusiasm, and not laughing too hard at me when I tripped walking in the field and landed in a muddy creek. At the end of the visit, they gave me a small gift box with an assortment of their cigars. There’s no people like cigar people.

*me, Gissell, and Luis. I didn’t get the pink shirt memo*.

I felt so lucky to have been able to visit these two factories. An at the time that I visited Rocky Patel I thought that it would be the second of two factory visits that I would make; but that afternoon I got an e-mail arranging for me to visit Plasencia the next day, which would be my final day in Estelí.

Nicaragua

Visiting Las Villas Cigar Factory in Estelí

In was in Estelí, Nicaragua remote working for a week and, as it is the cigar production centre of Nicaragua, I had reached out (with the help of a Spanish speaking colleague) to some factories to arrange tours to Las Villas, Rocky Patel, and Plasencia. This led to one of the more unique and personal experiences I have had, combining two of my passions: travel and cigars.

The first of the factories that I visited in Estelí was Las Villas. This wasn’t a factory or brand that I was familiar with, but they were the first to extend an invitation so happily accepted.

I walked there from my hotel. It took a little less than half an hour but the heat made it feel longer. Along the walk I passed other buildings that had cigar logos on the outside. These were not ones that I was familiar with and appeared to be small operations. Occasionally I walked past a building that had no signage outside whatsoever but I could hear voices and smell tobacco through the cracks in the windows. I don’t mean that I could smell smoke from tobacco I meant that I could smell raw tobacco, and it was apparent to me that these were also small rolling operations. There are entire streets in Estelí that smell like tobacco, or like heaven depending on your perspective.

*other, random factories passed en route*

I walked down some unpaved back roads in a residential neighbourhood and passed a couple of donkeys when I found my destination. Behind the security gate was a small, new-looking building containing the cigar factory.

I was met by a fellow who gave me a tour of the factory, I think because his English was the best of the people on staff. And I feel like a jerk because I wrote down the names of the people that I met but I lost the paper and so I don’t remember his name, but this was him and me in the picture enjoying a cigar.

He took me through the Las Villas where people were fermenting tobacco, rolling cigars, bundling and aging them. This glimpse into cigar production was truly fascinating. I had visited factories previously in Miami and Cuba, but it was still thrilling to see. Something about cigars that not many people realize unless you know cigars is how many steps it takes to make a cigar from when you plant the seed to when you box them up. They go through a long and intricate process of growing, harvesting, aging, fermenting, sorting, rolling, testing, aging some more, banding, and boxing. It is said that a cigar passes through 200 hands on its way to being ready to smoke. It’s one of those rare items that still, today, is made entirely by hand. I find it kind of moving to see all of these people handcrafting this thing that I enjoy so much. I don’t think I take it for granted, but it is very special to see first hand all of the effort that goes into a cigar.

My guide showed me around the factory and took me into the rooms where they were aging tobacco. He gave me a cigar to sample which was excellent (and thankfully it was excellent, because I had never had these cigars before and it would have been an awkward experience if the cigars were bad).

Cigars in various forms. The ones in the middle at the ‘By the Book’.
The little oily pigtail ones on the end are a custom roll for a buyer.

After the tour I was taken into the office of the owner of the company and his brother. Guillermo Pena Jr. Is the owner of Las Villas and of course I forget his brother’s name because I lost the little piece of paper where I wrote it down. The brother didn’t speak English, but Guillermo did. He told me the story of how he and his brother grew up in Cuba and worked as cigar rollers there before escaping to Miami in the early 2000s. They started working initially at cigar factories in Miami before going out on their own to create their own cigars. They eventually created a factory in Estelí, Nicaragua and started rolling cigars for other brands as well as creating their own. They started with eight rollers and today they have over 200. While I was there, I tried a Las Villas cigar called By The Book, which came in a cigar box that looked like a book. It was excellent. Full bodied, leathery, earthy, with a hint of natural sweetness, and a perfect construction in an oily wrapper. It was a truly amazing experience to be sitting in this office on the leather sofa in the middle of a cigar factory in the middle of Nicaragua talking about cigars with these men. bonded over our mutual passion.

I left feeling elated. It was such a unique experience – but it was only the first of three.

The next day I would visit Rocky Patel and tour both the farm and factory.

Tag: cigar factory

South Beach

Miami & Calle Ocho

Leaving Estelí for Granada

The Poshest of Hostels

Wandering Granada

Smoking Cigars in Granada

Heading Home

Factory

Farm