Tabac natif de Cagayan

Origins

The seed followed the faith: in 1592, says the Philippine press, the galleon San Clemente brought fifty kilos of Cuban seed, and it was the missionary friars who spread it through the archipelago and found that it thrived in the Cagayan Valley, in the province of Isabela. Spain held a tobacco monopoly there from 1782 until its abolition in 1881 — the very year the Marquis of Comillas founded in Barcelona the company that succeeded it, whose Manila factory would be Asia's first cigar factory.

Cultivation

The Cagayan valley lies four hundred kilometres north of Manila. Its climate is close to that of Cuba's Vuelta Abajo, and that is what settled its calling.

Character

Not a cultivar but a local strain, Isabela, which gave its name to the house of La Flor de la Isabela: here, the brand and the plant are one and the same. The Philippine press notes that the name today mostly designates a cigarette Burley; the valley's cigar tobacco is the dark air-cured that the Asian industry attributes to Isabela.

Notes

• Wood
• Earth
• Sweet spice

Pairings

• Black tea
• Long black coffee
• Dried fruit