Field Trip: "El Titan de Bronce" cigar factory - Miami, FL

Hello from Miami! I'm writing today on day 3 of my 6-day jaunt into the Sunshine State. It's great - who can argue with mid-80s, sunshine, and breeze? There will be a couple of brewery reviews coming up in the next couple of days, but I wanted to first post about Miami's cigar culture. I ventured out yesterday to Miami's historic Calle Ocho, or SW 8th Street, where the storied "Little Havana" neighborhood is. Aside from little tiendas, cafes, and restaurants, Little Havana has a bunch of cigar shops and open-air markets. Many of the cigars shops I visited were just that - retail shops, with much of the usual stuff you'd find in a Thompson catalog. But I was looking for a more authentic experience - a place where cigars are made, not just sold. And I found one!

It's a small cigar manufactory and shop called "El Titan de Bronce" located on the corner of Calle Ocho and SW 11th. It's pretty small, mostly filled with places for cigar rollers to work. There's a small retail counter as well, but chiefly this is a working factory.

The shop itself opened in 1995 and is family owned. They employ only "Level 9" rollers, the highest certification of skill level for cigar makers, which means they are all expertly-trained and are capable of making the most complicated shapes and sizes of cigars. According to their website, their rollers have also worked in big-name factories like Partagas, Romeo y Julieta, and Corona. One former employee, also the son-in-law of the owner Sandy Cobas, is Willy Herrera of Drew Estate fame.  They also employed the famous Maria Sierra, who for 32 years worked in the El Lagito factory in Havana. Maria was chosen as a young girl by Castro himself to roll at this prestigious factory.

Cigars are usually made in large factories, or small shops like this one. The expert rollers, called a torceador(a) in Spanish, will take a variety of tobacco and in certain proportions lay them out, roll them, and twist them to form the cigar shape. They usually sit at a desk like this:

They use a variety of tools like a flat blade to cut and trim the leaves to roll them into a perfect shape. This factory makes cigars using the entubado method, which means they roll up the cigar's innards (called the filler) into a tube shape. Then, once the innards have been appropriately crafted, they wrap it and then use very fine tobacco (with some vegetable glue) to gently wrap and twist the mouth end into a cap, or capa. That's what the lady above is doing - putting the finishing touches on some cigars. This shop makes their cigars with a triple cap - three different layers. It's a time-consuming process, and I'm told that the store can produce 1400 of such cigars per day. After the cigars are done, they're checked by another master roller, pressed and trimmed for consistency, then placed in the aging room, where they're left to sit until it's time to send them out.  Look at all those mazos!

This shop also had a small retail area, where they sold only the cigars they produced. They had five different kinds, all of which I purchased: their mild / medium "Titan de Bronce Gold", their "Grand Reserve" maduro; a Habano sun grown (which I bought two lanceros, a great format); and a dark maduro, the "Redemption, My Way." I ended up smoking the "Titan de Bronce Gold"  pictured below. They were pretty affordable, with the most expensive being $8 each. I also had a really good time chatting with Sra. Cobas, who gave us a tour of the factory and described each of the production methods. 

It was really neat to see up-close the way cigars are made, in a small traditional shop. Of course there's a lot more that goes into it - agriculture, specialty tobacco, and different production methods - but in general, cigars have been made in shops like these for well over 100 years. While some modern-day labels have huge factories that churn out thousands of cigars per hour, there are still many shops like this one that make cigars by hand in the Old World tradition.