Art of Making a Cigar

Art of Making a Cigar

Now that you have seen some of the great premium Capa (Wrapper) we use for Dona Elba Cigars, let's take a look at the next type of tobacco we use to make that great tasting cigar from Nicaragua.

The binder is referred to in Nicaragua as the Capote. We have gone to great efforts to find and use the Capote that melds well with our premium cigars. Although, the binder does not ordinarily contribute to the taste of your cigar but is very important to help control the burn rate while you are enjoying your relaxed time with your cigar. We do have a strong feeling that the Capote we have chosen for our blends does add to the quality of the premium cigar.

The Capote we use most of the time is a Indonesia grown tobacco. Knowing which prime (the order of harvesting the tobacco leaf) to use is so important to us. We keep this as part of our secret in the construction of a Dona Elba Premium Cigar.

Here comes the very top secret to our great cigars. This is the filler we use. In come of our Premium cigars there can be us to 4 or 5 types of leaf used. The filler also comes from different parts of Nicaragua. An Ometepe (from the fresh water lake of Nicaragua) is much different that a filler which comes the Estelí farms.

Filler is qualified as one of either Seco, Viso or Ligero which is determined by the priming of the tobacco plant. We also use an Organic grown Viso and Ligero in some of our famous blends.

Not only is the choice of the tobacco important but, the placement of the different types of tobacco becomes very important. You can readily tell the difference of a premium cigar by trying a taste of the different tobacco as a standalone cigar when you join us in our blending room at Doña Elba.

The construction of a premium cigar at Doan Elba Cigar goes through a testing for draw. We start with the formula that tells the buncher exactly how much of each tobacco to include in each premium cigar. The formula also tells where the different types of tobacco is placed, whether it being in the first third, middle third, the bottom third or the entire length of the premium cigar at Doña Elba. When multiple filler is used, our formula designates where each type of leaf is placed in the binder.

We also run each of the cigars, after pressing but before the Capa (Wrapper) through our draw machine. A cigar that fails, is returned to the roller and later used in our cigarillo product.

An under filled cigar is constructed by skimping on the number of leaves in the filler. The draw will be easy and the burn will hot burning and harsh. Under filled leaves too many air pockets.

A cigar that is overfilled will certainly be hard to draw. Sometimes they are called plugged cigars. A hard to draw cigar gives much less volume of smoke giving less taste and aroma. There is no excuse for this overfilled cigar when a Doña Elba Cigar formula is followed by the buncher and roller.