Do you need Cameroonian tobacco to create a cigar with a Cameroon wrapper?
Increasingly, that’s a question tobacco growers have been asking (with apologies to the Meerapfel family, who cultivates much of today’s genuine Cameroonian tobacco).
But the fact of the matter is that it’s possible to take Cameroonian seeds and plant them elsewhere in the world to create Cameroon tobacco leaf to wrap cigars in.
Indeed, in the late 2010s, this is what Julio R. Eiroa of JRE Tobacco had been trying to do for more than a decade at his company’s farms in the Jamastran Valley of Honduras. In fact, Eiroa is such a perfectionist that he sought not just to imitate traditional Cameroonian leaves, with their mottled, rough, and toothy appearance; he wanted to outdo the product that he had at one time bought from the Meerapfels.
“I can do it better!” thought Eiroa. And for years, he struggled to do just that on a small patch of land he had dedicated to planting with authentic Cameroonian seeds. But Eiroa’s plants ended up looking nothing like what was produced in West-Central Africa. His leaves were too perfect-looking — too clean and reddish in color. Eventually, Eiroa realized this was because he had tended them too much, nurturing them closely as he does with all his tobacco — including the Cuban corojo-seed varieties his farms are most famous for.
After a salesman of Eiroa’s insisted on rolling and smoking a few cigars utilizing Eiroa’s Cameroonian leaves, Eiroa realized he had actually succeeded in his aims; the appearance of the finished product was what had put the JRE founder off. Very quickly, rather than dismissing what he had created, Eiroa began singing its praises, and the rest, as they say, is history; the Aladino Cameroon line of cigars was born.
This vitola of that line, the Lonsdale, is one of the most acclaimed and complex cigars JRE offers, having garnered a 91 rating from Cigar Aficionado. Featuring the aforementioned Honduran Cameroon-seed wrappers and Eiroa’s famous “Authentic Corojo”-seed binders and fillers, the Aladino Cameroon Lonsdale is a puro Honduran smoke through and through.
A slim and elegant stick, the medium-strength Lonsdale affords a wonderful draw and rich, oaky smoke, in which one can discern elements of mint, white wine, orange peel, and almond before encountering a finish of tea leaves.
Available in boxes of 24, it’s one of the very best cigars JRE offers, and given Julio Eiroa’s seven-plus decades of cigar-industry experience, that’s saying something.