Cliff ... 4200 lbs. of leaves is a lot of cigars! I heard that they only release small quantities of them at a time ...
Here's more on the story ... for those interested:
Paul Magier is a cigar enthusiast who owns a small cigar work-shop in New York established in 1964 by a Cuban - Armándo Ramos (Puros de Armándo Ramos) in a kind of backyard shed in the city of New York. Ramos, who before the Cuban revolution rolled cigars daily over the long period of 30 years for Ramon Cifuentes in Havana, making nothing exciting - simply that for the "everyday smoke", sold this micro-workshop to Paul Magier and cooperated with him in the future. Armándo is today in his late eighties and the cigars obviously kept him healthy for a long life.
No doubt, everything would have remained just as non-spectacular, if Pauls brother-in-law, a real-estate agent, had not told him in 1997 about a building which he had to currently sell in Trenton, New Jersey.
In a basement, two stories deep, 14 bales of tobaccos were discovered - approximately 1,900 kilograms (4,200 lbs.) with the marking of "Pinar del Rio/Cuba". They were intended for the company of "Red Dot Cigar", which did not exist anymore. The tobacco was dated September 1957. Paul Magier had the tobacco examined by Armando, who classified it as Rosado Corojo wrappers from Cuba. He certainly knew it. The tobacco was certainly not ideal, but had nevertheless been stored in a warm and moist environment, so the aroma-providing oiliness of the tobacco had been maintained.
The actual story, which comes close to the wanderings of the Greek hero Odysseus, begins at this point - an odyssey through the dense scrub of the American bureaucracy, intensified by the rigorous embargo regulations. Paul Magier bought the tobacco lot and thought that if the Cuban tobacco had been legally imported and declared in the USA before the embargo, it would also be possible to use it legally. Paul had to prove its origin and with a handful of experts commenced with the difficult work. One expert's opinion after another was produced, with the tobacco being looked at somewhat suspiciously, and with the greatest skepticism by the authorities, or even doubted altogether, and the procedure dragged in great length.
Eventually a conclusive opinion of the experts was compiled and submitted, which could trace the entire course of the tobacco to the USA.. It came from the plantations of the famous Cuban family of Mendoza y Cia. Contracted in the middle of 1957, the tobacco came through middlemen into the USA at the beginning of 1958 and was properly cleared through customs in March 1958, even before the new Cuban state of the Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro was established, and was supplied to the "Red Dot Cigar Company", which then went bankrupt in 1962. After this very taxing hurdle race over the bureaucratic bars, Paul Magier had reached the destination of his dreams. He obtained the legal rights to use the Cuban tobacco for his cigar production.
In the meantime, a production site was established in Ecuador and a small factory was constructed there in Quayaquil, where Paul Magier worked very closely with the Aray family, the oldest raw tobacco producers in the country. At the 1998 RTDA show in Nashville, the biggest annual cigar fair of America and also of the world, Magier presented his first cigar - the Pinar 1958, with 80% of the old and "legal" Cuban tobacco and 20% Honduran tobacco in the blend. No more than 200 boxes were produced monthly which were received by only 20 selected retailers.
Already by November 1998, the blend was again changed - the share of old Cuban tobacco was reduced to 50% and the other 50% consisted of four Nicaraguan tobaccos of different maturation. The cigar was now called the "B" Pinar Series.
The second part of the story of the legal Cuban tobacco cigars began in spring 1999. Paul Magier bought from the liquidation assets of the Gross-mann Cigar Co. in Tampa, Florida over 18,000 kilograms (40,000 lbs.) of splendidly stored Cuban pre-embargo tobaccos (from the harvests of 1956, 1958 and 1960), which were all completely legally bought, with customs cleared before the embargo. The necessary documents and certificates of origin were available and the bureaucratic hurdle race could be overcome in record time. Unlike the first tobaccos, these were mainly filler tobaccos of ligero, seco and volado leaves which allowed a more balanced and more complex blend of the cigars.
Paul Magier recalls with amusement that after his first "Pinar 1958" cigars, he received tobacco and also cigar offers from all over America, which were supposedly all of Cuban origin. "I had to fight through nonsense, stupidity, up to outright fraud - almost a full-time-job". With the new tobacco warehouse of old Cuban tobaccos, Paul Magier can produce around 1.3 million cigars. "Since we have extremely limited production of our "Pinar Legal Cuban" cigars and are using the Cuban tobaccos in widely varying weights, our inventories remain large", Paul says assuredly. "Now I can put my dreams into reality".
