Once Arturo Fuente moved its headquarters and factory to the Dominican Republic in 1980, its business began to turn around, but it wasn’t until the early 1990s that something even more significant happened.
Fuente family boss Don “Carlito” Fuente Junior had heard what he considered a particularly cutting remark from a French retailer that the Fuente firm was merely an assembler of cigars — not a “maker” of them (because the cigars’ components came from other companies and faraway places).
Tormented by this remark, Carlito vowed to do what hadn’t been done before — produce a “puro” all-Dominican-made cigar that could compete on a stage with sticks produced by any other brand from anywhere else in the world.
In order to carry out his vision, Carlito needed land on which he could grow tobacco. Deep in the island’s Bonao Valley, he found a 37-acre plot of mineral-rich farmland belonging to legendary tobacco grower Angel Oliva that he eventually purchased and christened “Chateau de la Fuente.”
After several false starts, Carlito succeeded in growing tobaccos that had never before been cultivated in the Dominican Republic. By the mid-1990s, Carlito had introduced new products and was on the verge of shaking up the entire cigar industry. The tobaccos grown at the Chateau de la Fuente were generating business like Arturo Fuente had never seen; orders for its cigars were going through the roof.
Now, some 26 years later, the 37-acre Chateau has grown to more than 300 acres, and it boasts some of the greatest tobaccos to be found anywhere in the world. It’s these tobaccos — drawn from the Fuente family’s private reserves — that fill (and bind) the Chateau Fuente vitola of the Chateau Fuente line and are rolled inside an Ecuadorean sun-grown wrapper to make these very select, very desirable, short but flavor-dense Robusto-shaped, cedar-sleeved cigars.
With superior construction, a satisfying draw and a dead-even burn, these medium-bodied, medium-strength sticks are a must-have. Nuances that smokers have detected in them include those of coffee beans, cedar, earth and white pepper, accompanied by touches of cardamom spice, berries and black cherry.
In 2012, Cigar Aficionado gave these smokes a 90 rating. A great “morning” cigar, they pair perfectly with a first cup of Joe.