The Puro Sabor Festival Begins In Nicaragua
The warmth of Estelí, Nicaragua was a welcome change for a good number of cigar fans at Puro Sabor, the annual Nicaraguan cigar festival that is happening all this week. Many fled the frigid temperatures that have taken over a large swath of the United States and swapped them for sunnier weather here in what has become the cigar capital of the world.
Currently, Nicaragua is producing more handmade cigars for the U.S. market than any other country. It makes nearly 60 percent of the handmade, cigars that are imported by the United States, and it’s on pace this year to ship more than 250 million cigars to the United States when the final import figures for 2024 are tallied. This week is a celebration of the culture and how far the Nicaraguan cigar industry has come.
Some of the people attending the festival arrived on Monday in Managua, the capital of the country, and the festival proper kicked off on Tuesday in the colonial town of Granada, located about an hour south and east. This was the touristy part of the festivities, as no cigars are made in Granada.
The group then drove north toward Matagalpa, and reconvened in San Isidro for a welcome lunch on a tobacco farm owned by cigarmaker Victor Calvo. This is where the real cigar immersion began.
The farm, known as Finca Mariangel, showcased sun-grown, Cuban-seed tobacco. Calvo grows a newer hybrid here known as Habano 2021. The tour moved to a tobacco-curing barn on Calvo’s property, and everyone entering the barn was handed a cigar. Lunch was served in here, a Puro Sabor tradition.
The tour later moved north, about one more hour’s drive, from San Isidro to Estelí, where so many Nicaraguan cigar factories are located. This is where you will find cigars made by Padrón and Oliva, Plasencia and Perdomo, J.C. Newman and Joya de Nicaragua, A.J. Fernandez and Espinosa and STG and so many more. On the first night in Estelí, it was time for dinner, dancing and cigars. It was a festive but informal affair hosted at J.C. Newman’s PENSA cigar factory, where Brick House cigars and others are rolled.
Estelí is where the festival truly kicked into high gear, and yesterday a number of factory tours were available from the leading cigar producers of Nicaragua. To go along on one of these tours, and to see inside one of Nicaragua’s biggest cigar operations click here.
