Oy, get your fingers out...smoke more sticks!!

[nicwing]

Now I know what twitter is for.

I picked this up on a thread from an american and thought you boys would be interested, I think we do our bit for the Cuban economy but it's obviously not enough.

http://cigar.me/content/cuba-cuts-back-cigar-tobacco-acreage

Hope there is still something left for Robusto to see next month......

[daverave999]

What a great article Nic! An upshot of this could also be that the quality rises if the less-skilled rollers are made redundant. Not that I understand how Communism reacts to market forces...

Beautiful graph in there too.

[nicwing]

The really worrying thing is that with so little money in the Cuban economy there are no funds to preserve the original Cigar Factories in the centre of Havana.
Talking to the Armando the roller at Davidoff earlier this year he told me that the Partagas factory would close this November (just after Bry's visit hopefully) and that this is the last of the original factories working in the old city.

The money can be found to renovate the Partagas factory but the others are just being left to rot.

So smoke more sticks boys!!

[cbob]

In the interests of full disclosure however, it must be pointed out that we have been hearing these "Cuba going down the tube" stories for many years from various sources with vested interests in their own sales of non-Cuban products .
And I'd trust the opinions of a roller from Davidoff about as much as I'd trust predictions from the production manager at Don Pepin.

Heck, when Miguel brown tells me that he can't get enough good tobacco so he's shutting down half the production at el Laguito I'll still take a "wait and see' attitude.

I'm not a pessimist, you understand, just an optimist with experience.

.

[nicwing]

I see you as our 'Man on the ground' in Cuba Captn' Bob so thanks for some balance!