From Spain to Cuba to the Dominican, the Cuevas family has been making cigars for over a century. Luis Cuevas of Casa Cuevas has proudly carried on the family tradition. He spoke to Cigar Life Guy about the pleasure of working with his father and son, the work that goes into the blending process, and the camaraderie that comes with living the cigar life.
First Premium Cigar
Cigar Life Guy: Tell me about your first premium cigar experience.
Luis Cuevas: My first premium cigar experience was in 1997 when the boom took off. Oddly enough, it wasn’t one of my cigars. It wasn’t a cigar that I was producing at the time. I didn’t have a brand, but my dad had the factory. We were producing for other people. So, I picked up a Macanudo Connecticut, the cigar to smoke back then. I was with friends who had been smoking cigars before I began smoking cigars-even though my dad had the factory. I should have smoked something that my father smoked (laughs), but I went to a shop and bought a Macanudo. We were hanging out, and after that, I kept on going. Look where I am now.
Casa Cuevas Cigars Are a Family Tradition
Cigar Life Guy: You come from four generations of cigar makers. What is it like following in your father and grandfather’s footsteps?
Luis Cuevas: Huge, huge shoes to fill. It’s a privilege, with my dad running the factory and my son helping out locally. It’s a blessing. How many people can say they work with their father and their son? I am super thrilled and super blessed. We try to keep business separate from family, so we don’t discuss business when we get together. We set aside time for it. For example, my dad is flying in tomorrow, and we won’t be able to discuss anything until Sunday morning. We’ll take about an hour or two and then be done. It’s regular family talk. We don’t try to mix the two. We keep things less job-like.
Merging Tradition with New Blends
Cigar Life Guy: Your family went from Spain to Cuba and eventually the Dominican Republic. Tell us how you merge the long cigar-making tradition with creating new blends.
Luis Cuevas: My great-grandfather emigrated from Spain to Cuba. My great-grandfather left the northern part of Spain, where he was a farmer, and went to Pinar del Rio, Cuba, a tobacco country. Since he had been a farmer in Spain, he became a farmer in Cuba, and the crop of choice was tobacco. So he kind of fell into it. Then, my grandfather took over and did very well.
Then, 1959 happened. By ’61, everything was confiscated, and he wound up going to the States in 1970. In 1983, my dad and my uncle decided to revisit the family business and opened up a factory in the Dominican Republic, and it’s been back and forth ever since. My uncle is no longer with us. My dad and I now have the factory. That’s the way it worked out. It came full circle. What my great-grandfather started in Cuba was reborn in the Dominican Republic.
New blends have been a lot of fun because my son is involved in the blending. As a younger palate, he has smoked a lot – a greater variety of cigars than I have. Because he worked at a major cigar retailer, he could smoke many different brands, and we incorporated that into the blending process.
The blending process is a lot of fun, but after a while, it becomes a lot of work because you go through ten or fifteen blends before you come out with something you like. If you smoke that much during a week, we’re talking a lot of cigars. It’s not a single malt. It’s not a puro. Let’s say the wrapper is from Ecuador or Mexico, and then the filler is anywhere from Columbia to Peru, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Pennsylvania. Everything is put together, like when you’re cooking. They’re ingredients. So we put them all together and create what we think the rest of the public will like. Keep our fingers crossed, and we will launch it. The transition wasn’t that tough because we had access to many different tobaccos from around the world and the factory and we just played around with the flavors.
A Little About the Casa Cueva Portfolio
Cigar Life Guy: You use tobacco from all over the world. Tell us a little about your factory process and the Casa Cueva portfolio.
Luis Cuevas: We initially started with a Connecticut, a Maduro, and a Habano. The Maduro is from Mexico. The Connecticut and Habano are from Ecuador. We started with those three wrappers because they were the best-selling in the United States. After that, we expanded into a couple of different vitolas. The Flaco 7×43. A shag foot 6×52. Eventually, we moved on to using Corojo, which we used for our Patrimonio. Then, last year, we launched our Cameroon, my son’s blend- Sangre Nueva- which means “new blood” because he’s the new blood from the family. (laughs). So, little by little, we’ve tried to use different wrappers to change the flavor profiles and to give the consumer various choices — a variety. You want to smoke a Connecticut? We’ve got it. You want to smoke a Cameroon? We’ve got it. You want to smoke a Maduro? We’ve got it — that kind of thing.
The Cigar Community
Cigar Life Guy: What is your favorite aspect of the cigar community?
Luis Cuevas: The camaraderie. Anywhere you go throughout the United States, and even the world, when you go to a lounge, they greet you like your family. They’ll say hello. They’ll always have a conversation. You sit around and talk to different people and get to know them; they come from all walks of life. You may be sitting next to a retired millionaire. Another guy is a student, and another guy is a dishwasher, and the one thing that brings everybody together is what you’re smoking.
If you want to level the playing field, just take off the band. That way, if a guy is smoking a house cigar because that’s what’s affordable to him and the other guy is smoking a fifty-dollar cigar, whatever that may be, once you take the band off, you’re just smoking a cigar. We’re breaking bread, so to speak. That’s my favorite part.
Any lounge we go to, everyone says hi. That’s the custom. If you’re by yourself, someone might call you over. I’m not talking about it as a brand owner but as a cigar smoker. We were in London at Fox’s, and they didn’t carry my cigar there. They had no idea who I was, but my wife and I went upstairs and conversed. It’s a unique type of thing. You don’t get it at a bar. You certainly don’t get it at a restaurant, but look at a cigar lounge, and you get that camaraderie.
Casa Cuevas Labor Challenges and The Sledgehammer
Cigar Life Guy: What is the cigar industry’s biggest challenge today?
Luis Cuevas: Well, it’s nice to know the FDA has stepped back a bit from crowding us. For a while, it got a little scary with all the rules and regulations. So that’s gone. The biggest challenge right now is rollers, which may surprise everyone. There needs to be more rollers for the Dominican, where we are, and Nicaragua and Honduras. So labor has become a challenge, specifically rollers. They work in pairs. One individual rolls the cigar, and the other puts the wrapper on, but both aspects have been a challenge the last year, and this year is not any better.
The Future for Casa Cuevas
Cigar Life Guy: What’s next for Casa Cuevas Cigars?
Luis Cuevas: Next, we are launching the Mandarria Oscuro, our 6×52. It means “sledgehammer”. The original one we launched in 2019 was a Habano. That cigar was born because we had a break-in at our local office here in Miami. They took a sledgehammer, broke into the back wall, cut into the humidor, and wiped us out. We tried to make light of it by coming out with a cigar that made fun of it when we went to the trade show that year in 2019. It was supposed to be a one-and-done, limited edition, but it took off and was no longer a limited edition; it was full-on production. This year, we came out with a Maduro version of it, an Oscuro. That’s the newest thing. We’re receiving our first shipment on Tuesday and will distribute it afterward. We’re excited about that project.
Cigar Life Guy: Have we missed anything? Please tell us anything else you’d like the cigar world to know.
Luis Cuevas: It’s an industry built on passion. It’s a kind industry. Everyone is here to help; we couldn’t do it without the consumers. When you see someone smoking your cigar, or they get to know you and say, “Hey, I like your cigars,” it’s a privilege. It’s an incredible privilege to be a part of someone’s humidor. There are a lot of choices out there, so if we’re just something they go to on occasion, it’s a privilege. It’s a people industry that’s what it’s all about.
Follow Luis on Instagram and check out the latest from Casa Cuevas here.
Photo credit: Casa Cuevas