It Takes 3 Years and 300 Pairs of Hands to Make This Cigar

On this episode of Our American Stories, a century ago, Tampa, Florida, was "Cigar City." Some 150 factories filled the city, where workers rolled more than 500 million cigars by hand each year. One by one, those factories disappeared as the industry changed and production moved overseas. Today, only one remains. The J.C. Newman Cigar Company still makes cigars in Tampa using many of the same methods that helped make the city famous.

Drew Newman, the great-grandson of company founder Julius Caesar Newman, takes us inside the last cigar factory in Tampa and into a craft that begins years before a cigar is ever rolled. Tobacco must be grown, harvested, naturally fermented, aged, blended, and finally rolled by hand. A single cigar can take three years and pass through some 300 pairs of hands before it is finished. Drew shares the history behind an American industry and how his family is working to keep its traditions alive for another generation.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories.
And we tell stories about everything here on this show,
including your stories. Send them to OurAmericanStories.com. They're some of
our favorites. And now joining us is Drew Newman, the
great-grandson of the founder of the oldest family-owned premium cigar
company in the United States, to tell us the story

(00:33):
of cigars in America. Here's Drew with the story.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Most people don't realize that the United States has a
rich cigar tradition that dates back to the 1600s. The
first crop of cigar tobacco was planted in the Virginia
colony in 1612. And at the time of our American independence,
every colony grew tobacco and many of our founding fathers,

(01:02):
such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, were tobacco farmers.
100 years ago, Tampa was the cigar capital of the world.
Tampa was known as Cigar City, and there were 150
large cigar factories just like ours here in Tampa that

(01:23):
made more than 500 million cigars by hand each year,
just in Tampa. To give you some comparison, today there
are approximately 300 million premium handmade cigars sold in the
United States each year that are made in Central America
and the Caribbean. But 100 years ago, one and a

(01:45):
half times that amount was made just inside the city
limits of Tampa. But in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s,
many of these factories here in Tampa closed. And one
by one, they moved their production overseas to developing countries,
primarily because The way we make cigars, it's so labor

(02:08):
intensive that the labor savings of having overseas productions really
help them lower their costs and be more efficient. And
so one by one, we realized as the other factories
were closing that suddenly my family and I had the
last cigar factory left in the cigar city of Tampa.
And we're very proud to be here, very proud to

(02:30):
continue the American cigar tradition and.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
But doing so is at an added cost.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Labor's more expensive, materials are more expensive, but we think
it's worth it to keep the American cigar-making tradition alive.
We roll cigars today just like my great-grandfather did 100
years ago. The process hasn't changed one bit. It's slow,

(02:59):
it's labor-intensive, And because we are dealing with nature, every
single cigar is different. Generally speaking, it takes about three
years and 300 pairs of hands to handcraft a single cigar.
The process starts in the farms. Beautiful farms that are

(03:21):
here in the United States are in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and
here in Florida as well that grow beautiful cigar tobacco
the same way for generations. Farmers plant the seeds in
a greenhouse and then transplant them into the field.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
And after about 60.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
Days, the plants grow tall and thick and beautiful and
green and lush. And each leaf is picked off of
those plants and hung in a barn where the tobacco
naturally wilts.

Speaker 3 (03:52):
It dries out. It loses its humidity. It crumples up
a bit.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
And then from that point, the tobacco is taken down
leaf by leaf. put into bales and then sent to
be fermented naturally. And all we're doing with these natural
leaves that are of tobacco that are grown is simply
putting them into piles. We put them into big piles
of about a thousand pounds each and add a little

(04:17):
bit of water. And mother nature combines the water with
the tobacco and the leaves get warm. And as they
get warm, The natural ammonia in the leaves releases from
the tobacco and what's left is a beautiful aroma and
taste of natural tobacco leaves. That process of natural fermentation

(04:38):
is slow. It takes roughly eight months of simply letting
the leaves sit in the pile, turning the pile every
eight days so they have an even fermentation. And then finally,
we get to have leaves that are thin and that
are silky, that are smooth, that are beautiful, that we
can then gently roll into cigars. The cigar rolling process

(05:06):
is really interesting. I like to compare it to wine
because we make cigars just like the great wine makers
make blends of red wine. What we do as cigar
makers is we take different leaves grown on different plants
in different farms in different years, and we blend them

(05:27):
together to create unique and different tastes. Within a single
tobacco plant grown on a farm, you can have 40, 50,
60 different grades of tobacco because some leaves are longer,
some are shorter, some are thicker, some are thinner. The
leaves near the top of the plant get more sun,

(05:48):
so they have more nutrients, so.

Speaker 3 (05:49):
They taste stronger.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
The leaves at the bottom are thinner and have fewer nutrients,
and they burn better. And so it's our job as
cigar makers to understand these natural variations in leaves that
are grown, blend them together, harness this natural variation, and
create unique blends that consumers like. None of this is

(06:15):
written down. There's no school for cigar making. There are
no rule books. It's simply a tradition that's been passed
down from generation to generation to generation that we are
working very hard to maintain.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
And great job, as always, by Joey bringing us that
story and the production. Superb, as always, and a special
thanks to Drew Newman, who's great-grandfather was the founder of
the oldest family-owned cigar company in the United States. By
the way, be sure to visit the J.C. Newman factory,
El Reloj, with your family. That's in the Tampa region

(06:53):
if you're ever in the area vacationing, or heck, you're
on your way to Disney and you're passing through. They
have some great exhibits and loads of activities for your
family to enjoy. The story of American cigars is told
to us by Drew Newman, the great-grandson of of the
oldest cigar maker in the country, here on Our American Story.

(07:27):
Lee Habib here, and I'd like to encourage you to
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(07:48):
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