NACSA

NACSA is a factory before it is a brand, and this atlas writes it as such. It was born in 1995 in Estelí as Nicaragua American Tobacco S.A. — NATSA —, launched by Juan Francisco Bermejo with partners including Lew Rothman, the owner of JR Cigar: for years it rolled exclusively for that retailer, inexpensive cigars, Quorum among them, until J.C. Newman opened PENSA in 2011 and brought the line home. This atlas tells PENSA at the J.C. Newman entry.

The turn came around 2015: a new building, further down the same road, and the decision to make premium cigars. The factory hired Raúl Disla for production and attracted clients — Asylum, whose entry this atlas carries, Steve Saka's Mi Querida, then Patina in 2019. It is partly owned by the Oliva Tobacco Company, the Tampa leaf broker founded by Angel Oliva Sr. in the 1930s, which grows at the neighbouring Finca Guadalupe — a house with no link to Oliva Cigars, and the confusion is common enough that the press points it out every time.

In January 2016, Larry Palombo, forty-four years in the trade and former vice-president of tobacco at Altadis USA, came to reblend the registered brands the factory kept in a drawer — Red Dot, Villar y Villar, La Rosa Especial, Aristoff — to bring them to market with Oliva's tobaccos. It is for those brands that NACSA has an entry here, and not only a place in other houses' entries.

Range Depth

• Red Dot

  Wrapper Undisclosed · Strength Medium

  One of the factory's registered brands, reblended by Larry Palombo in 2016 on Oliva's tobaccos.

• Villar y Villar

  Wrapper Undisclosed · Strength Medium-Full

  An old brand name, taken out of the drawer with La Rosa Especial and Aristoff.