We were greeted by Jose Blanco and Mario as soon as we arrived. The first thing you notice about the JDN factory was how old, yet well taken care of the factory is. There is a lot of history there and it shows. After a brief introduction Jose and Mario took us inside. Right away I was surprised by just how small and quaint the factory is. It seems as if this is the little factory that could. Once we got out to the production floor I couldn’t help but get a sense of pride from all the workers. It was a totally different feel than any other factory I had toured in the past. The factory is set up very different too. There are two main floors, production goes down on the top floor while storage and packaging take place on the bottom floor. Once you climb the stairs you are thrown right into the rolling floor. Surrounding the rolling area are the sorting, tobacco storage, and quality assurance areas. One neat conversation I had with Jose Blanco was concerning the quality assurance process of the Cabinetta serie cigars. I was watching a lady roll only the maduro portion onto the cigar. You see, the cabinettas are rolled with the natural wrapper just like any other cigar, then a separate roller adds the maduro section. Jose was telling me that they limit their rollers productivity. They get paid per piece, but most are limited to about 325 cigars a day. There reason they do this is so that the roller doesn’t try to speed through their cigars to make more money which could possibly produce bad quality cigars. The idea is to pace yourself and do every cigar right. I then asked if that goes the same for that one roller who only had to place the maduro cap section on the Cabinetta, and surprisingly it did. They train that roller to be extra precise with that one portion. We even timed her with the roller rolling full sized cigars next to her and sure enough, they were working at the same piece. What this means is, each Cabinetta made actually costs Joya De Nicaragua almost twice as much in man-power cost, yet they commit to keeping the cost of that cigar low. Nicely done JDN.

Anyways. After touring the entire production floor we headed downstairs to take a look at warehousing and packaging. Again, this factory in all aspects is a well oiled machine. They have about half the people pumping out just as much product. The employees there really seem to know what they are doing. One thing I didn’t ask was what the average length of employment was for each of the workers there. I would imagine with the history of the company it would be pretty lengthy.

After the tour Jose and Mario brought us out back to an open, covered patio for some coffee and our Joya De Nicaragua blending session. The blending session here was really straight forward. We were schooled on the types and differences of the tobacco that they carry at Joya De Nicaragua. We were given tips on how to mix them, and what to pay attention to as we felt the texture of the tobacco, smelt the aromas, and even rolled a few leaves up and smoked them. Thor obviously new how to roll his own, but Mario Takeyama had some problems. I don’t have a picture of it, but I know some of the other guys there snapped a few. Basically, he made what he called the “Mawio Cigaw Buwwito”. It was almost the size of my arm. Man I love that guy.

After the blending sessions we headed back to Drew Estate to enjoy a relaxing lunch before checking out Jessie Flores’ subculture studios. Bascially, Subculture studios is the place where all the artwork for all the crazy Drew Estate projects gets thrown down. The company started with Jessie doing all the work. He actually explained that he hooked up with Jonthan Drew as a mere graffiti artist who ran into him at a gas station. The two hit it off and became good friends. As time went on, Jessie realized that Jonathan spoke very poor Spanish, and his translator sucked so Jessie went on to assume that role. The two became very close and as time went on Jessie soon became the artist behind all things Drew Estate.

Jessie now employs a handful of people under him who ensure that all things Drew Estate are hip, artistic, and plentiful. Serious this kid has so much raw talent it’s scary. You should really check out the pictures at the end of the post to see more of his artwork.

We headed back out on the road, this time on our way to visit the My Father factory. It was interesting to see how close the Nicaraguan factories are both in terms of distance, and relationships. Joya, Drew Estate, Oliva, Perdomo, and My father were all within a few minutes of each other

The rain had been hitting hard all day. We were actually there during the rainy season which means it was incredibly sunny one minute, pouring rain the next, the back to sunny, back to rain, and the cycle continued. Kind of like that clip in Forrest Gump. Anyways. What the rain did was it actually caused part of the My Father factory to lose power. Pete Johnson from Tatuaje greeted us at the door and took us on our tour. The first leg was the 4 buildings that were sans-power; the tobacco receiving, storage and sorting areas. It was different than most factories as each of these areas were housed within their own buildings. I wish I could have gotten more pictures there, but most of them didn’t come out due to the fact that it was pitch black.

After we toured the smaller buildings we headed inside while making a quick stop at the box storage area. My Father actually has a full box manufacturing facility on site, but it was closed and locked when we too the tour so sadly, we didn’t get to see that. Either way I was very impressed with the massive amounts of ready made boxes they had on hand. We proceeded through the tobacco bodega, then onto the rolling floor. Much like Drew Estate, My Father is a huge factory with a ton of rollers. Every at that, I don’t think that they had more than Drew Estate did. One awesome addition was a double table roller set put up in front of the rest of the rollers. You can see in the picture below who these two seats belong to.

After the production tour we hit the packaging department. Again, this area was huge. There was a ton of neat little projects going on. We actually got to take a first, hands on look to the much anticipated “Little Monsters” series by Tatuaje.

We ended the tour with a few minutes with the man, Jaime Garcia. The air in any room feels different when you have Steve Saka, Jaime Garcia, Pete Johnson, Jose Blanco, and Willie Herrera in it. It was a shocker and I think we were all impressed at the amount of talent and knowledge in that room.

After the My Father factory the Cigar Safari team lead us to a quick tour of the Oliva factory. After being in so many factories we were brisked through this one. The first thing I noticed about the factory was it was rather primitive. They weren’t using some of the same technologies or procedures some of the larger factories did. Again, this factory was just more of a hands on machine. This isn’t to say the company doesn’t produce top-quality smokes, we all know they do. It was just interesting how they seemed to put less money in the factory which ultimately shaves off the cost of their product. Oliva has always produced quality, cost effective cigars.

The most impressive part of the Oliva tour was the massive amounts of tobacco they have stored. Seriously, there were tons. Another great experience at the factory was we got to meet the legend himself, Gilberto Oliva, a.k.a. “the chick magnet”. Ok, they don’t call him that, but they did go on to tell us on how much a of a flirt he was. Look at the dude, he’s got charm written all over him!

The last leg of this expedition was a tour through the Drew Estate tobacco bodega. This was basically a crash course led by Steve Saka on how they store, ferment, and ready their tobacco for processing. I’ve never actually been involved as much with the hands on fermentation of tobacco so I soaked up a ton of knowledge from this experience. For those of you who don’t know, tobacco is fermented by being stacked in huge “pilons” about 4 feet tall. I have no idea how to spell that word, but you get the idea. Anyways, the stacking of the tobacco causes a reaction within the leaves that heats up the tobacco to temperatures as high as 160 degrees. No one knows for sure if it’s a chemical reaction or biological, but Steve Saka and Jose Blanco seem to think it’s more chemical. As the tobacco heats it releases the natural aroma into the air. They track the tobacco on a daily basis and rotation the fermentation as needed. We got to actually stick our hands inside a pilon to see just how hot it gets, ant it’s hot! Saka said that if you leave it unattended long enough it could actually combust and catch fire. Luckily, fire is the only disaster Drew Estate has yet to face (knock on wood).

From the tobacco bodega we headed back to Drew Estate for a much needed rest, and dinner. Burrito dinner to be exact with some of the best BBQ I have had. After dinner we hung out on the patio for some time before Jose Blanco started his blending session. This session was much more intensive. We started out by smoking a cigar that had 4 different wrappers. We had to guess which tobacco was used. I actually went 3-4 on that. He also went into everything from taste, texture, body, strength, and construction. One huge subject that came up was flavor in which Saka and Jose agreed with us bloggers that taste is related to memories of items that we have actually enjoyed. For instance, when we say chocolate and coffee, this is just our taste buds picking up flavors that remind us of coffee and chocolate which enables us to describe these flavors to you all. This is a subject that comes up often and I am glad that someone was finally on our side.

And that was that, the end of the trip. A few of us spent that night smoking and drinking late into the evening. Steve Saka eventually joined us and told us all sorts of stories from his past, his family, when he was a blogger, and the start of his career. It was really nice to hear from him on such a personal level. I swear, that guy needs to write a damn book on his experiences. One thing that I loved about the trip was Jonathan, Saka, and Jose’s love for not only what they do, but for us. Not many companies see new media as a valid form of media. Although more and more are coming around, these guys really see the power in what we do, the passion behind it, and the work we put in and respect it and us. We felt loved. At least I did.

In closing, I just want to thank everyone involved in this trip. It was a once in a lifetime experience and I urge any cigar enthusiast to enjoy a Cigar Safari trip. You get to meet amazing people, experience a wonderful country, and get schooled on the cigar manufacturing process. Again, Thank you Steve Saka, Jonathan Drew, Pedro, Allejandro, Pedro, Jessi, Jose Blanco, Gary, Pete Johnson, Dave Lafferty, John Brooke, Willie, and everyone else that joined us, and welcomed us.

Check out more pictures from the day: (click each image, once you are done hit “back” on your browser to return to this page. Annoying, I know, but the only other quick option was stupid flash.)

Click Here if you rather see the image via my personal Flickr slideshow.

Link: Drew Estate – Cigar Safari – Blogger Trip Day 1

Link: Drew Estate – Cigar Safari – Blogger Trip Day 2

The post Drew Estate – Cigar Safari 2012 – Blogger Trip Day 3 appeared first on Cigar Reviews | Beer Pairings | Casas Fumando.

After a full night’s rest we enjoyed a quick breakfast at the hotel and then it was off to Esteli. It was roughly a two and a half hour bus ride to Esteli. I started the morning off with a Joya De Nicaragua Cabinetta, possibly one of my favorite morning smokes. I was quickly chased off that cigar while Jonathan Drew shared some “Thank You” prototype cigar they had created with us. I don’t know too much about the blend or it’s purpose, but it was badass. Really badass… Anyhow, the bus-ride took us through the city of Managua, the countryside, and the city of Esteli. I was blown away by the amount of loose cattle along the way. The highway was full of drifting cows and horses, not to mention people who just crashed out and napped under random shade trees. The ride was long, and scary at times as we were doing 80mph up a twisty mountain-side highways, but we arrived at the Drew Estate factory in Esteli in one piece.

The city of Esteli is actually quite pretty. Modest, and on the lower class end, but the people where happy as they hustled through the colorful streets. Almost every corner had a mess of kids playing soccer or running through the streets. We hung out at the resort-side of the factory for a few hours. Checked out the pool, the rooms, the patio, and an awesome clubhouse all overlooking a river valley.

After the brief introduction to our home for the next two days we settled down for some lunch. I can’t quite remember what we ate that afternoon, but everything we had at the Drew Estate facility was just ridiculously delicious. Serious. Five Star, professional Chef-style. Along with out food we were introduced Drew Estate President Steve Saka, Alejandro Martinez Cuenca – the man behind Joya de Nicaragua, as well as two new cigars I hadn’t heard of pre-Cigar Safari. The Liga Privada “Black Rat” and the “Big Black Rat”. Saka basically said the blend was based off the Dirty Rat with a slightly tweaked blend including a much darker, lower priming wrapper. The interesting thing is as we were smoking them together, we had all talked about how the cigar tasted much more similar to the No. 9, and less like the dirty rat. Saka agreed. He agreed so much that the next night he actually handed us a few more of the same blend, only with a new name “LP 9 Pequeno”.  I’m not sure if these cigars will ever hit the market, but we can only hope. One thing that’s hard to overlook at the factory is the crazy artwork at every turn. Seriously, every corner, crown, baseboard, wall, everything has crazy amounts of artistic attention.

Anyways, after lunch we took a tour of the Drew Estate factory hosted by Jonathan Drew and Steve Saka. Despite being a big scary guy, I must say, Saka is a sweetheart and one of the most knowledgeable people I have ever met. Not just about the cigar industry, but about all things. He’s like a big, nerdy, sweet, teddy bear. Anyhow. We started in the board room where they guys passed out another new blend, the “UF-13 Dark” and told us all about the Drew Estate history. A few things that I totally admired about the company was the incredible way they treat their employees. They told us about a benefit that all Nicaraguans receive at work called the “13^th Month Bonus”. Basically, once you complete 12 months of employment you receive a bonus month of pay. That bonus decreases over time and by the 8^th month, it is no more. Most employers in Nicaragua get around the policy by firing their employees before their 12^th month just to re-hire them. At Drew Estate, not only do they pay them the full 13^th month bonus, but the pay them that every year no matter how long they have been with the company. Along with that, they offer lots of other benefits unheard of in the country, such as life insurance. Not to mention they actually have disabled workers in the factory. One guy didn’t have any arms, and we spotted a blind gentleman loading cigar boxes into bulk packages to be added to containers. They really are out for the best interest of the city and rightfully so, Tobacco is one of the top 5 items that carry the Nicaraguan economy.

The first two things that caught my eye on the tour was the massive amount of cigar rollers they have going at the factory. Seriously, there must have been at least 300 going at any given time. (a side note on this, Saka actually explained that just about all of his rolling staff enters the company fresh. They don’t like to get rollers that have worked at other companies before as they are likely to carry over habits they learned. Every factory does things differently and Drew Estate is interested in teaching their employees their way from the ground up)  Secondly, the entire staff was much younger that I expected. Saka actually pointed out that there are condom stations in the facility to promote safe sex. Needless to say the one we saw was dead empty, even though it was filled earlier that morning. Another thing I noticed was the employees were so happy, laughing, smoking, joking. It’s not something I had seen before. Another interesting note was there were very few bunchers using Liebermans (press machines used to assist in the bunching of cigars). They actually try to ween them off the machine until each and every cigar is rolled 100% by hand. This isn’t the case in most factories, but it helps in the Quality Assurance area as it forces more accountability on the bunchers. We watched the rollers roll quite a few cigars including the infamous EGG and Medusa. We even got to smoke newly bunched feral pigs before being put into molds, pre-wrapper. What a difference. Seriously. The cigars was crazy loose, pepperbomb powerhouses. I couldn’t even get halfway though mine.

Next we headed into the Quality Assurance rooms. Drew Estate actually enlists a computerized system that includes bar-codes that get scanned every step of the way. This way they can track each team of rollers and bunchers to address any problems that they have. These bar codes actually follow each bunch of cigars all the way though the creation process until they hit the color sorting tables. If there is a problem they can track it down to each and every employee that touched that bunch of cigars. This enables Drew Estate to crack down on inconsistencies quickly and address them. Pretty high tech.

We visited room after room of cooled cigar storage rooms. These areas are cooled so that the cigars will get a change to de-humidify a bit before being packaged. As we learned in the sorting process, the tobacco has to be wet and shaken out in order to separate the leafs before sorting. This also helps remove any excess ammonia left in the leaf. Needless to say the tobacco will stay pretty moist from that point forward. We also spent some time in packing. Basically, we got a tour from the time the raw tobacco hits the factory, and the finished, packaged cigars leave. We even got a look into the blending process as we took a detail-oriented blending seminar with Jonathan and Saka in which we got schooled on the different regions, tobaccos, farms, and even blended our own cigars. I haven’t tried mine yet as I have been way too sick, but I can only imagine it’s pretty terrible.

After the tour we had dinner, then headed up to the clubhouse for some drinks. We were then joined by some very special guests, Pete Johnson from Tatuaje Cigars, Gary Griffith from Emilio Cigars, and Jose Blanco along with his fiancé. I tried to troop it out, but after a few hours and a few drinks I hit the sack. I know some of the guys actually stayed up until 4:30 that evening. I just couldn’t hang.

Check out more pictures from the day: (click each image, once you are done hit “back” on your browser to return to this page. Annoying, I know, but the only other quick option was stupid flash.)

Click Here if you rather see the image via my personal Flickr slideshow.

Link: Drew Estate – Cigar Safari – Blogger Trip Day 1

Link: Drew Estate – Cigar Safari – Blogger Trip Day 3

The post Drew Estate – Cigar Safar 2012 – Blogger Trip Day 2 appeared first on Cigar Reviews | Beer Pairings | Casas Fumando.