Tobacco from Connecticut is considered some of the best in the world. Why are there only a few people growing it?
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Dave Altimari to discuss his article, “Made in the shade: CT tobacco farmers roll with the times,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read Dave’s story here.
WSHU: You smoke cigars. So it must be fascinating to look behind the scenes into tobacco growing in Connecticut, considering shade tobacco leaves grown in the upper Connecticut River Valley are some of the best in the world. So tell us a little bit about the Connecticut tobacco and the shade tobacco specifically, and what you found when you went to look into this.
DA: So Connecticut shade tobacco has always been known as the best tobacco to wrap a cigar in the world, and I was surprised to learn that it's basically not really grown here anymore. The only person who grows Connecticut shade tobacco now is a farmer in Southwick, Massachusetts.
WSHU: Wow. Why so? If it's much sought after, why have the farmers left the business?
DA: Several reasons. First, it is a hard crop to grow. There are six pickings. It's very susceptible to bugs and bad weather, and it doesn't like a lot of wet weather. And it's also, you know, after you pick it, you have to hang it, and you have to let it hang for like two months. So it's a little tricky to handle. But the real reason was that some of the major cigar companies realized that, for some reason, Ecuador and the Upper Connecticut River Valley have almost the same climate and soil, and that they could move their operations to Ecuador and pay significantly less to get the tobacco.
WSHU: So labor was responsible.
DA: A lot of the major companies now grow what they call Connecticut seed shade tobacco in Ecuador. But it is not the same thing.
WSHU: Okay. Now, what happens with the tobacco leaves? You said it takes a while for them to be dried out, and picking the tobacco is labor-intensive. I was fascinated when I read in your article that people had to crawl on the ground to pick the leaves. Could you just describe that?
DA: Some of the plants are 10- 12 feet high. There were six pickings, and we went to the first one, which was in late July. So they had to literally pick the leaves off the bottom of the plants. So what they do is scoot along the ground, pick the leaves, and put them in a little plastic bin.
WSHU: And this cannot be mechanized. It has to be done by hand.
DA: All by hand. There were about 50 people picking on the day we were there. It was mostly a mix of older Jamaican guys and high school kids. Some of these guys have been doing this for 40 years, and for some of the others, it was their second day on the job. So it's quite a mix of people. And Dwight Arnold, the farmer who grows it in Southwick. You know, he's basically there running the show. He knows everybody's name. He's moving people between different rows of tobacco. It's all also underneath this, like a white cloth covering.
WSHU: That's why it's called the shade tobacco, because it has a shade.
DA: To keep it from the sun and also to it, it's very warm. It almost makes it more tropical. It was interesting to see the difference between standing outside and then going underneath the cloth, the shade cloth. It was definitely a little more humid, which is good for the tobacco. So he has about 35 acres now that he's planting. There used to be well over 1000 acres of shade tobacco planted in Connecticut, not that long ago, in the 80s and maybe the early 90s. Tobacco hasn't disappeared. A lot of those farmers now grow what they call broadleaf tobacco, and that is used more as tobacco to fill a cigar, not as a wrapper. It's different, so easier to grow, not as temperament, not as temperamental. And so a lot of farmers have switched to growing what they call Connecticut broadleaf.
WSHU: Now, tell us, what is the difference between the wrapper and the filler? Was that distinction made?
DA: So broadleaf, the leaves, that they pull the whole plant. It’s not just one or two leaves six times. They do it one harvest, pull the whole plant, and hang the whole plant upside down to let it dry. The process of drying is very similar. You still need the sheds and to hang everything from, but it's much easier to get it to that point. You just pull the whole plant and hang it upside down. It dries quicker. You don't have to worry about it ripping. You know, the Connecticut shade is only used for a wrapper, so you have to, if you rip it or tear it, it's no good. The tobacco browns as it hangs. It's hard to handle. You have to; it's a delicate thing to handle, and you don't want to rip it at that point, because now it's almost ready to be sent to the factory.
WSHU: So if it is ripped, it can't be used to wrap.
DA: Yeah, you’re not going to wrap a cigar with a ripped wrapper; it won't work.
WSHU: And the shade tobacco that's grown here is sent to the Dominican Republic for drying again.
DA: Yes. So what happened is Dwight has a contract with the company that sells Macanudo cigars, and so they basically have told him, We will buy whatever you grow, and we will use it on our high-end Macanudo cigars as Connecticut shade wrapper cigars. So he probably after he picks it, he probably dries it out in his sheds for six weeks to two months, depending on circumstances and weather, and then it gets shipped down to the Dominican, where the Macanudos are made, and it is dried some more. It generally takes roughly a year from when a leaf is picked until somebody wraps a cigar in it.
WSHU: Wow. So what's the future for the tobacco farmers of Connecticut?
DA: Actually, after my story ran, I got two phone calls from farmers who used to grow Connecticut shade, and they wanted Dwight’s phone number. They missed growing it. And so what's happened is a lot of these farms that you know pass down between generations. So the 27-year-old manager of one of the farms called me this morning and she said, Can you get me Dwight's number? I picked it when I was small, and I miss it. And you'd be surprised how many farmers miss growing it. So Dwight has a client, as I said, and they seem to take whatever he grows. He's expanded. He started at 15 acres. He's up to 35, I think he's going to go, possibly go to 50 next year. So I don't know if it's going to ever be make a comeback to what it was, you know, 30 years ago, but it is, there is a market for it still, so hopefully it'll still be grown, because it is still, you know, everybody talks about kind of gets known for its pizza and basketball teams, but in a lot of places in the world, it's actually known for its tobacco.
