Lexicon
Tapado
The cultivation of tobacco under cloth canopies — the filtered light produces especially fine, elastic wrapper leaves.
In tapado cultivation (Spanish for “covered”), growers stretch cloth canopies over the fields: the filtered light produces thinner, paler, and more uniform leaves of the kind sought for wrappers. This is the principle behind Cuba’s wrapper leaves as well as the famous Connecticut Shade with its light Claro tones; in Ecuador the near-permanent natural cloud cover takes the place of the cloth. Tobacco grown in full sun, by contrast, produces thicker, darker, and more full-bodied leaves.