After Carlos “Carlito” Fuente, Jr. helped move his family’s cigar-making operations to the Dominican Republic in 1980, he decided to revive an art form that had nearly been lost — the shaped cigar. In particular, he was intrigued with one specific shape — the Perfecto, which had its heyday in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, when it was crafted by some of the most skilled master rollers of the trade.
The Arturo Fuente Hemingway line revives the Perfecto shape in several unique ways, constituting one of the most creative and significant families of cigars of the last 40 years. The Perfecto form, which features a pronounced nipple on its foot, initially gives the smoker only a preview of the rich flavors contained within the cigar as it’s smoked through. Eventually, however, the first few puffs give way to notes of earth, coffee, oak, black pepper, cinnamon and other spices as these stogies burn.
The Hemingway line is named after the man who many consider the greatest of American novelists, who — in addition to citing cigars in his writing — lived in several of the greatest cigar-making locations in the world, including Cuba and Key West.
As the writer simply called “Papa” by his friends famously journeyed around Africa (and had scars to prove it), perhaps it is fitting that these cigars utilize rare Cameronian wrapper to surround Dominican fillers sealed by a Dominican binder to produce bold, memorable cigars that are ready to bookend a few stories of their own. In fact, to borrow a few of Hemingway’s own revered words, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to refer to these noble, distinctive, adventurous sticks as simply “a movable feast.”