Mexico

Mexico stakes everything in the premium world on one valley: San Andrés in the state of Veracruz, close to the Gulf Coast. What grows there on heavy volcanic soils is inseparable from modern Maduro culture.

Terroir and Regions

The San Andrés valley lies in the Los Tuxtlas region, a volcanically shaped landscape in the south of Veracruz. Mineral-rich dark earth, tropical humidity and abundant sunshine produce a thick-leafed, resilient tobacco that seems made for long fermentation. Its best-known representative is the San Andrés Negro, an old native variety: fermented as a wrapper, it becomes a deep, dark Maduro with aromas of earth, cocoa and a gentle sweetness — more rustic and drier in character than Brazilian leaves, with a distinctive, almost leathery spice. Manufactories in Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic use this leaf by the thousand; scarcely a Maduro trend of the past decades has managed without San Andrés.

The Turrent Family

Mexico’s tobacco history is closely bound to one family: since 1880 the Turrent family has grown tobacco in the San Andrés valley — according to tradition, the fields trace back to an ancestor who arrived in Mexico from Cuba carrying tobacco seed. Over five generations this grew into one of the largest tobacco producers in North America, which today accounts for a large share of Mexico’s export tobacco. With the brand Casa Turrent, the family also produces its own cigars in the valley — puros that present Mexican tobacco not as an ingredient but as the main event.

For a long time Mexican tobacco carried a reputation for roughness; the present day has revised that verdict. San Andrés now stands alongside the great wrappers of the world — and carries some of the most widely discussed cigars of recent years.