Legend surrounds the Chateau de la Fuente tobacco estate in the village of El Caribe in the Dominican Republic’s fertile Bonao Valley. It was at this place where Arturo Fuente family boss Don “Carlito” Carlos Fuente Junior made the momentous decision in the early 1990s to cultivate his company’s own tobacco for the cigars his family was rolling instead of buying or importing leaf grown by others.
Carlito started with just 37 acres sold to him by the legendary Angel Oliva of the Oliva tobacco-growing concern, and the rest, as they say, is history. (Although in the interim period, the Fuente factory and Chateau family estate have gone through turbulent years, facing fires, hurricanes and other natural disasters. But in the wake of each setback, the company has only come out stronger, and the Chateau has slowly grown into the famous manicured 300-acre ranch it is presently.) Today, the Chateau is known for producing some of the finest tobaccos in the Dominican Republic, and quite possibly the world.
Some of these tobaccos are in this very cigar — the Cuban Belicoso vitola of the Chateau Fuente line, featuring a sun-grown Ecuadorean wrapper on the outside and a Dominican binder on the inside. This medium-to-full-strength, medium-to-full-bodied cigar is saturated with wood, leather and nut flavors, with a pinch of both black cherry sweetness and orange peel tanginess to cap them off. This vitola was rated a 90 by Cigar Aficionado and has received ardent praise from industry insiders.
The Chateau Fuente line is known to use the finest tobaccos from the Fuente family private reserve at the Chateau, and this finely constructed, smooth-drawing vitola is no exception. Order a box today, and you too can sample the best of what the Chateau has to offer.