Cházaro

Cházaro is the only house in this atlas that rolls in Mexico outside Veracruz: at Ezequiel Montes, in Querétaro, on the wine and cheese road, a family of Veracruz origin opened around 2015 a factory it named Real Fábrica de Tabacos, in memory of the San Fernando one the Crown set up in Querétaro in 1779 — the second in New Spain — which closed in the first half of the nineteenth century. The two papers that visited it do not agree on the year: founded three years before 2018 for one, brand created in 2016 for the other; the entry writes both. Open to the public since 2017.

The tobacco comes from San Andrés Tuxtla, and so do the artisans: Antonio Toto Pucheta, Don Toño, a master roller with forty years in the trade, leads production with rollers from the valley, each at seventy to ninety cigars a day. Three lines — Black, four fifths light tobacco; Habano, half and half; Peña Blanca, with cane brandy and fruit juice. The figures differ by year: fifteen thousand cigars a month and seven tenths exported to the United States in 2018, fifteen people and about three hundred cigars a day in 2022; the entry writes both rather than choosing.

This atlas opens a rolling zone for it, Ezequiel Montes, without fields: a place where another region's leaf is rolled, like Dresden or Moscow.

Range Depth

• Black Cházaro

  Wrapper Negro San Andrés (Veracruz) · Strength Mild-Medium

  Four fifths light tobacco, one fifth dark — coffee, rum, fruit, says the house.

• Habano

  Wrapper Negro San Andrés (Veracruz) · Strength Medium

  Half dark, half light; leaves hydrated with rum and honey, says the house.