An All Kentucky Pairing!

[pepcycle]

I'm no expert either but I know a little.
The primary crop in Kentucky is Burley Red Tobacco. Its air cured, as opposed to flue cured, on sticks, in barns.
The primary use is for cigarette production.
In the past, it was mostly for domestic use, but the international market is growing faster than the domestic market is contracting.
Since the tobacco settlement and the collapse of the price support system, production in KY is down considerably. (I don't have a statistic) Money from the settlement was used to buyout tobacco quotas. Quotas were granted by the government to produce a certain number of pounds of tobacco.
Farmers were part of a cooperative that auctioned the tobacco to cigarette companies.
When the prices were high and supplies low, money was put away to support prices when supplies were high.
Cigarette companies buy directly from farmers now, destroying the auction business that supported warehouses in Lexington. The tobacco auctions are now a thing of the past.

The cigars are not made from this tobacco. My understanding is that they are made from tobaccos that are Broad Leaf.

[cowdery]

Thanks, Ed.

I certainly recall the many Kentuckians who had a little tobacco allotment, their pre-determined share of the price support system, which was passed from parent to child and often subdivided, like a vineyard in Burgundy, until many of the plots were tiny, although the tobacco grown on a few square yards of land could yield a few thousand dollars a year. I knew one guy in Cumberland County, and I'm sure this was common, who was a subsistence farmer and hunter whose sole source of cash income was odd jobs and his tobacco allotment.

I also have seen, in Kentucky, vast fields of tobacco, which is quite a striking sight, as the tobacco plant, if one is not familiar with it, looks like something from another planet.

[MJL]

Kentucky Burley tobacco is famous in pipe smoking circles. Much if not all of the pipe burley in the world emanates from Kentucky. Few cigars are puros (made from tobacco coming from the same area) due to the desire to create levels of flavors. Often the very specialized and expensive wrapper leaf will be chosen to bring to the party a specific flavor so as to create complexity and levels of flavor. For the record there were cigars being rolled in Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania well into the mid 20th Century. Most of these were cheap machine rolled cigars made from short filler. Many were also flavored with flavoring agents. Although I would love to see a domestic cigar industry reemerge in Kentucky this is much easier said than done. Had rolled cigars are deceptively simple. The fact is that they take dedicated farmers willing to take the huge amount of effort to grow cigar leaf that has to be essentially flawless. The farming of wrapper leaf is tremendously labor intensive. Then there is the post farm fermenting, aging and manipulation of the leaf to produce the desired flavors. This takes years of aging, turning, bundling, wetting, drying, etc The rolling of hand rolled cigars is quite literally an art form that takes a trained artistic hand to accomplish. That art form would have to be taught and fostered to maintain a steady flow of rollers. In the end a Kentucky cigar industry would be nice but would face a huge amount of problems to deal with.

[cowdery]

Thanks, MJL. Very interesting.

[MJL]

As I have stated in another post the easiest and cheapest way to sample Kentucky tobacco is via some of the brands of pipe tobacco that I mentioned in that post. I can verify that there is a distinct affinity between Bourbon and Kentucky grown pipe tobacco.

[cubacroc]

Quality hand made cigars are produced in Kentucky.

Kentucky Gentleman Cigar Company is located in Lawrenceburg KY.

http://www.kentuckygentlemencigars.com/

Good folks and great cigars!.

Allen has been a generous sponsor and donor for many local events.

They make the Blanton's cigars and many other varities. Custom orders and blends are available along with special packaging.

Schedule a visit the next time you are in the area.