Cuban Cigar Normalization Still A Pipe Dream

Source from:  WCF Courier.com 12/29/2014

Cigar smokers have been waiting half a century to puff a good Cuban stogie legally, and they are going to have to continue to wait, according to a local tobacconist.

Last week, President Barack Obama announced plans to normale relations with the communist island. Cigar connoisseurs hope this will include lifting the Cold War-era trade embargo that has kept Cuban cigars -- the holy grail of tobacco -- out of American humidors.

John Eveland, who operates the 104-year-old National Cigar Store on Sycamore Street and sister store Hill Street News and Tobacco on College Hill in Cedar Falls, said reopening trade with Cuba will rekindle interest in cigars.

"It will be good for the cigar business. It will be a spark," he said.

But lifting the embargo will take an act of Congress, and there is another obstacle that will take a long time to resolve, Eveland said. He said the nature of cigar production means even if the embargo is lifted, supply won't be able to keep up with demand for years.

Unlike most consumer goods, cigar companies can't simply ramp up production at a moment's notice. First, the tobacco has to be grown, and after harvest the leaves undergo a lengthy drying process. That adds at least three years, more for a richer taste, Eveland said.

He suspects there was no increased planting ahead of last week's sudden announcement.

"I think the demand is going to far outweigh what they have available," Eveland said.

The United States embargo on trade with Cuba began in the early 1960s after the Fidel Castro-led revolution overthrew the Batista government and the new government allied itself with the Soviet Union. As part of Castro's reforms, the government seized a number of longtime cigar manufacturers on the island and nationalized operations.

Since then, American cigar stores have specialized in products from the neighboring Caribbean islands and nations in Central America.

In 2004, National Cigar became one of about 70 stores in the United States that legally sold Cuban cigars. Eveland carried the product, Pinar 3000, which was made from a 2.5-million-pound stockpile of Cuban tobacco that had been imported into the country before the embargo and was later found in a New Jersey warehouse.

The cigars sold well, especially over the Internet, but that well ran dry about four years ago.

"You always want something you can't have," Eveland said. Enditem