Vegas de Santiago

Costa Rica passes for a country of workshops rather than fields: Selected Tobacco has leaf from elsewhere rolled there, and so does Casdagli. The Vegas de Santiago house writes that it grows part of its leaf and imports the rest.

The house writes that its families have grown tobacco in the volcanic mountains of Santiago de Puriscal, south-west of San José, for more than eighty years (above eleven hundred metres, says Zechbauer), and that it does without pesticides at that altitude. La Nación wrote in 2011 that tobacco production had ceased in Puriscal with the 1997-1998 harvest and that the workshop brought in its raw material from Peru, Ecuador and Nicaragua, only 15% being bought in Pérez Zeledón.

Who founded it can be read in two ways: Marc Niehaus alone, writes Casagranda, its German distributor; the Niehaus and Guzmán families together, writes Cigarrspecialisten, a Swedish retailer. The house, without naming a founder, presents Marc Niehaus as a partner and head of international sales. Casagranda dates the family factory Tabacos de Costa Rica to 1997; an interview with Marc Niehaus, published on vdg-cigars.com, places the opening of the factory in 1998; no cited source gives the year of the brand.

It makes its own lines — Chaman, Reserva, Don Luis, Secretos del Maestro, El Puro — and the workshop also rolls for others, among them the Zechbauer Royales of the Munich house. Chaman is one of its lines.

The workshop works under the name of Tabacos de Costa Rica S.A.: La Nación named Olman León in 2011 as owner of the factory, and Cigar Coop names Andrés León in 2019 as owner and operator. Zechbauer presents Olman León Guzmán as the head of the factory; Casdagli calls him master blender and writes that its cooperation with “Tabacos de Costa Rica S.A., then known as Vegas Santiago” began in 2012. The Villa Casdagli line is rolled there.

Other brands of this atlas come out of the same workshop: Selected Tobacco (Atabey, Bandolero, Byron) and Bombay Tobak, according to Cigar Coop; Malekö and Skull 77, which retailers say are made by Tabacos de Costa Rica S.A.

Range Depth

• Chaman

  Wrapper Ecuadorian Connecticut · Strength Medium-Full

  The name means shaman; the house's website also calls it El Mystico. The site gives a Connecticut wrapper from Ecuador, a binder from Nicaragua and a filler from Costa Rica and Nicaragua; another page of the house gives Costa Rica and Nicaragua for the binder.

  Robusto · Toro · Corona

• Reserva

  Wrapper Not disclosed · Strength Medium

  The house writes that its tobaccos mature at least three years before rolling and that its cigars rest three months in an air-conditioned storeroom, Zechbauer specifying a cedar room; these times apply to all its lines, and its pages do not give the origins of Reserva.

  Robusto · Toro

• Don Luis

  Wrapper Ecuadorian Connecticut · Strength Medium-Full

  Gold Label on the house's website, which gives a Connecticut wrapper from Ecuador, a binder from Ecuador and a filler from the Caribbean. Casagranda names Don Luis Santana Lamas, former head of production at the H. Upmann factory in Cuba, and Zechbauer writes that he worked at the workshop until his death.

  Robusto · Toro · Churchill

• El Puro (Red Label)

  Wrapper Costa Rica, says the house

  Special edition that the house says is made entirely of tobacco grown in its own fields, in the volcanic mountains of Santiago de Puriscal: wrapper, binder and filler from Costa Rica.