What’s So Special About Cuban Corojo Cigar Wrappers?
Do you like Maduro cigars?
Do you like Corojo cigar wrappers?
Ever wished that you could have the best of both in one cigar?
If so, then you are going to love the latest news from Camacho Cigars. Thanks to an exceptional harvest of cuban-seed Corojo tobacco, all of their popular Camacho Corojo cigars will now be available in Corojo Maduro.
That’s right. Corojo Maduro.
The Eiroa family, owners of the Camacho brand as well as Baccarat and La Fontana, are also major growers of Honduran cigar tobacco. Their tobacco is grown in Honduras in the Jamastran Valley, near that country’s border with Nicaragua.
Corojo tobacco takes its name from the Santa Ines del Corojo Vega, a plantation near the town of San Luis y Martinez in Pinar del Rio in the heart of Cuba’s famed Vuelta Abajo tobacco-growing region. Diego Rodriguez began renting the farm from its owner in Spain in the 1920’s, and worked for years to select and develop a superior wrapper tobacco for Cuban cigars.
Between 1930 and the late 1990’s, all cigars from Cuba — regardless of brand or factory — used Rodriguez’s Vuelta Abajo grown Corojo tobacco leaves for their wrappers. The spicy quality and peppery smoothness gave the leaf that unique Cuban “punch” that connoisseurs came to associate with authentic Cuban cigars.
The only problem is that true Corojo tobacco is also delicate and hard to grow. It requires just the right soil, rainfall and weather conditions. It is extremely susceptible to blue mold and black shank disease.
Cuba stopped growing it for that reason.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Cuba stopped growing the wrapper tobacco that had helped make Cuban cigars famed world-wide because it was too hard to grow on their government-run farms after the Revolution.
The 1996-97 Corojo harvest in Cuba was the last.
Tobacco production on the Corojo Vega was down and each year was a gamble. Would enough suitable leaf survive disease and weather conditions to supply wrapper for Cuba’s export quota of cigars? Castro did not like gambling with a prime source of income. The Cuban government needed to replace the delicate Corojo with something more durable and more dependable.
Enter the Habana 2000. Authentic Corojo tobacco was cross-bred with a Cuban cigarette tobacco called Bell 61-10. The Habana 2K (as it is popularly known) was not a hybrid between Corojo and Connecticut Shade as many believe. Crossing in cigarette tobacco made it more disease resistant and hardier. It also made it more difficult to ferment and, according to many, caused the hybrid wrapper to have burn problems.
And then there is the issue of flavor…
Back to the drawing board. Criollo ’98 and Corojo ’99 were supposed to have been improvements of the Habana 2000 strain. Others have described them as completely new attempts at developing a replacement Cuban wrapper by crossing Corojo with Connecticut Shade. Whatever the truth of the matter, it is these hybrids which are mainly used now not only in Cuban cigars but worldwide.
No Cuban cigars have wrappers of the original Corojo tobacco strain today.
No original strain of pure Corojo tobacco is grown today in Cuba.
Many cigar aficionados say that the last really good Cuban cigars were made about a decade ago, with the last crop of authentic Cuban Corojo grown in the Vuelta Abajo.
That brings us back to Camacho cigars and the Eiroa family.
“We got our Corojo seeds directly from Daniel Rodriguez, the grandson of Diego Rodriguez,” says Camacho president Christian Eiroa. “We have been growing Corojo and Criollo (in Honduras) since the 1960s. We refuse to use hybrids and call it Corojo.”
The Eiroas have been very successful in growing the original Cuban strain of Corojo in the Jamastran Valley, which has soil and climate conditions remarkably similar to those of Cuba’s Vuelta Abajo. “This tobacco yields exceptionally well in the Jamastran Valley,” Eiroa says. “There is rich soil here that loves to give strong, full-bodied tobacco. Corojo also needs the sun. It loves it.”
The Honduran growing conditions seem to agree with Corojo, although it is still a delicate crop and is still susceptible to disease. 
That is a trade-off the Eiroa family is willing to live with in order to harvest what they consider to be superior, authentic leaf.
“To the best of our knowledge, we are the only people growing the Authentic Corojo seed and we want to make sure that consumers are aware of this,” said Eiroa.
The Eiroa’s Corojo harvest two years ago was truly exceptional. Camacho will begin to ship all of its Camacho Corojo cigars and El Legend-Ario Authentic Corojo cigars with the tobacco from the 2004 Corojo harvest. Christian comments, “My father, Julio, has called this crop his best Corojo harvest so far. Aside from a higher wrapper yield, the quality and the colors are like never before.”
This new tobacco will allow Camacho Cigars to offer a Corojo Maduro that will be true to the word “Maduro,” which in English translates to “Mature.” Now, the Camacho Corojo and the El Legend-Ario Authentic Corojo series cigars will be the only ones on the market as far as the Eiroas know whose Maduro wrapper is neither Broadleaf nor Mexican. A truly good cigar has become a uniquely good cigar.
Camacho Cigar Company Offers Their Popular Cigar Line In Corojo Maduro Now
All sizes of the Camacho Corojo line will now be available in Corojo Maduro. Camacho Cigars will eliminate Mexican Maduro wrapper completely from their Monarca Maduro and Diploma Maduro cigars. Camacho Corojo and El Legend-Ario Authentic Corojo cigars will now be classified and sold as either Natural or Maduro. The Camacho Corojo Dark Naturals line is being phased out and will be eliminated once the current inventory has been exhausted.
If you like Maduro cigars like I do, you are going to want to try the Camacho Corojo Maduros.
Check with your local tobacconist and find out when they will be available in your area, or keep watch at your favorite online retailer. Camacho and the Eiroa family has done it again. You are going to be hearing a lot more about these cigars.
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