It’s like going home when I visit Alejandro Robaina and his family, the famous tobacco growers in Pinar del Río. Alejandro, 89, is a warm and intelligent man with a heart of gold. I often said that there were three living icons in Cuba – Fidel Castro, Alejandro Robaina and Compay Segundo. God bless the latter’s soul. I knew him well and, of course, his music.
It’s about a three-hour drive from Havana to his plantation, which is located close to the town of San Luis. He grows both wrapper and filler tobacco. The former is grown under cheesecloth-like tents, which diffuse the light to assure fine textured, thin tobacco to cover the best cigars in Cuba. His leaves are gold dust and the Cubans know it. The Robainas have about 250,000 plants this year in the ground in their fields. The harvest was already halfway done when I visited him yesterday. It looks amazing. I will tell you more about it in a few days.
