Tabacalera William Ventura

Tabacalera William Ventura is a factory in Tamboril, in the Santiago free zone, and it rolls for several houses: it is where Caldwell has its blends composed, where La Barba ended up settling its own, where ADVentura and Freud are rolled.

William Ventura comes from Davidoff, where he ran production for years — he was already there when Davidoff cigars arrived in the United States, in 1991. He opened his own factory around 2007; the sources differ by a year, and this entry says so rather than choosing. His children joined him: Henderson Ventura, blender, whose name recurs on collaborations; Wiber, twenty years at Davidoff before leaving in 2019 to build something with his father; Nataly, on logistics, packaging and finance, and on blending too.

On 26 September 2022, before three in the morning, a fire broke out in the building the factory shared with Intercigar. Everything burned: close to 800,000 cigars awaiting packaging or ageing for Ventura, 700,000 finished cigars for Intercigar, and the raw material. About a hundred employees, fewer than forty rollers, no one hurt. Robert Caldwell announced that same week that production would resume at satellite workshops and at El Maestro, the small factory the family kept for its own brands.

The new factory, under the same name, reopened in March 2024, and both run today. Since then, Scandinavian Tobacco Group has entrusted it with the Partagás Y Nada Más Santiago — a group brand at a family factory, which says what the trade thinks of it.

Its own brands are called William Ventura and El Maestro. But the entry exists first for the others: this is a factory that rolls for houses without one, and this atlas obliges itself to name who does what.

Range Depth

• William Ventura

  Wrapper Undisclosed · Strength Undisclosed

  The brand bearing the house's name — the only one that does.

• El Maestro

  Wrapper Undisclosed · Strength Undisclosed

  The name of the secondary workshop, and of the brand born there. It is what held during the rebuild.