If you follow ChiefHava on Instagram you will catch a sneak peek at many of the things RoMaCraft is working on at any given time. Yesterday, he gave a glimpse of a cigar set to debut at IPCPR. That cigar is Guáimaro and it will be available in three sizes:
- Robusto, 5×52, $7.25 Single/$145.00 20 Count Box
- Corona, 51/2×46, $7.75 Single /$155.00 20 Count Box
- Torpedo, 6×54, $8.75 Single /$175.00 20 Count Box
It features a wrapper from Mexico (San Andres), a binder from Brazil (Arapiraca Castaño) and fillers from Nicaragua and Dominican Republic (Criollos).
In an email from Skip Martin last night he included this back story:
Esteban Disla’s life in tobacco began in 1985, in Navarete, Dominican Republic.
This was the year that Esteban’s mother Elena Disla, who had spent her entire life working in the tobacco fields surrounding Navarete with her own mother, began working raw tobacco for Sergio and Luis Cuevas in the town’s first premium cigar factory, Tabacalera Cuevas & Hermanos.
Worried for her eldest sons, Elena convinced Sergio Cuevas to allow Esteban and his younger brother, Ceferino ‘Raul’ Disla, to gather and sort tobacco scraps before and after school in order to keep them out of the trouble that many young men found on the streets in the small and impoverished rural town.
Sergio Cuevas, a Cuban expatriate, quickly grew fond of the young boys and began the process of mentoring them and passing along the knowledge his family had developed over the generations since the Cuevas Family had settled, and began cultivating tobacco, in the Vuelta Abajo region of the Pinar del Rio providence in Cuba.
Cuevas, whom Disla refers to as his ‘Padrastro’, arranged for Esteban to come to Estelí, Nicaragua to help Carlos Toraño in his new factory, Nica Habano, in 1997. In 2000, this factory was closed and Disla moved to his position as the Chief of Production at Latin Cigar. Under his leadership, Latin Cigar grew its annual production from 700,000 to more than 13,000,000. Disla was a key contributor to the success of many brands in the first decade of the new millennium sold under the banner of companies like CAO, Torano, Gurkha and Newman.
In 2008, STG acquired Latin Cigar and Disla transitioned to his role managing all aspects of the Esteli, Nicaragua tobacco operations. In 2011, he departed and co-founded Fabrica de Tobacos Nica Sueño with RoMa Craft Tobac co-founder, Skip Martin.
Over the last three years, Disla has been working to develop his own premium cigar brand.
“Tobacco is my life,” Disla says, ”I owe everything I am to Sergio Cuevas. He took a skinny black boy off of the streets and developed me into a man. He gave me a purpose in life, a profession, and I have dedicated every day to honoring his faith in me and the traditions of the craft that he entrusted to me. I can still hear his instruction, his advice, his reprimand. In the early days, he began referring to me in an affectionate manner; he called me by the name of the skinny, dark-skinned, young boys that would work on his family’s farms in Cuba. To this day, I can hear his voice speaking to me when I had done something to earn his praise and his respect: “Fenomenal, Guáimaro, Fenomenal”
The cigar will be imported, represented and distributed by Mike and Gregg Szczepankiewicz of Pospeich Inc, in Deltona, Florida
