In 1980, late Arturo Fuente patriarch Don Carlos Fuente Senior moved his family’s struggling cigar enterprise to the Dominican Republic. It was a momentous business decision that would ultimately have far-reaching repercussions for the Arturo Fuente brand and the cigar industry as a whole.
The firm had been on the island for 10 years before Don’s precocious son Don “Carlito” Fuente Junior decided that instead of merely churning out cigars that made use of tobacco leaves from other companies (and other countries), he would purchase land in the Dominican Republic to cultivate his family’s own varieties of tobacco so that Arturo Fuente could become a true “maker” of cigars, rather than just an assembler of them.
In the early 1990s, he bought 37 acres of farmland in the island’s Bonao Valley that he soon christened “Chateau de la Fuente.” By 1995, Arturo Fuente began selling cigars made from tobaccos cultivated at the Chateau, and the rest, as they say, is history. The Chateau quickly became known all over the world for its exceptional output, and along the way, Carlito became an equally famous man.
The binder and filler tobaccos in this cigar — the Chateau Fuente (named after the family’s famed estate) — come from the Fuentes’ venerable private reserves on this renowned property. This cedar-wrapped vitola — the Double Corona-sized Royal Salute, with a distinctive green band at its foot — is the lengthiest in the Chateau Fuente line, at 7.625 inches, with a ring gauge of 54.
These are large, elegant cigars, with sun-grown, genuine Connecticut Broadleaf maduro wrappers, that offer a generous smoking time (some have reported up to two hours) and a pleasant taste.
Incorporating top-notch construction, a perfect draw and a razor-sharp burn, these medium-bodied, medium-to-full-strength smokes are full of rich yet balanced flavors of cedar, earth, walnuts and chocolate, along with subtle undertones of spices and espresso.
If you want to experience some of the best tobaccos from the Fuente family’s private reserves, you couldn’t do better than ordering a dress box of Chateau Fuente Royal Salutes (with Maduro wrappers) today.