Corojo

Origins

A selection, not an invention: in the 1930s and 1940s Diego Rodríguez, who had rented the El Corojo vega near San Luis, in the Vuelta Abajo, since the 1920s, sorted Criollo seed until he obtained a plant apart — dark leaf, fine veins, made for wrapper — and named it after his farm. The year 1947 circulates for its coming into cultivation; the trade press does not date it so precisely, and the entry says so. He died in 1956; his son Daniel left Cuba in 1960, and the vega was nationalised. It reigned over Havana wrappers until the late 1990s, before its vulnerability to disease had it replaced by its descendants.

Cultivation

Grown under shade cloth, like any leaf meant for a wrapper. Its flaw was not in the field but in its make-up: it caught everything, and harvests were lost.

Character

A fine, even wrapper whose name outlived the plant: it turns up in Honduras and in Cuba's Corojo 99, its resistant offspring.

Notes

• Pepper
• Cedar
• Leather

Pairings

• Aged rum
• Black coffee
• Cocoa