The Chateau de la Fuente estate in the Bonao Valley of the Dominican Republic is probably one of the best-known acreages of tobacco farmland in the world, but it wasn’t always this way.
When cigar-maker Arturo Fuente was founded in 1912, the company strictly sold its sticks in the Tampa, Florida area, and for many decades, Arturo Fuente was a regional — not even a national — cigar-maker.
It was Arturo Fuente’s son, the late Don Carlos Fuente Senior, who made the pivotal decision to move his family’s business to the Dominican Republic in 1980, setting up his famous Tabacalera A. Fuente cigar factory in the nation’s second-largest city of Santiago.
One thing Arturo Fuente was not doing at that time was making a whole cigar out of Dominican components — it would be another 10 years before Don’s son, Don “Carlito” Fuente Junior would buy a 37-acre patch of land from tobacco grower Angel Oliva and finally do what many said couldn’t be done — produce a “puro” 100-percent Dominican cigar, using leaves cultivated on this land that Carlito would later dub “Chateau de la Fuente.”
Today, Chateau de la Fuente is a manicured, world-renowned, 300-acre farm that produces some of the very best tobaccos in the world. And these tobaccos — from the Fuente family’s private reserve — are what’s inside (and are used for the binder of) this Chateau Fuente King T vitola, which also features an Ecuadorean Connecticut-seed shade-grown wrapper. Every King T cigar comes in an ornate metal tube emblazoned with imagery of the famous Chateau.
Mellow, mild-to-medium-bodied, mild-to-medium-strength and well-balanced, these cedar-sleeved, Churchill-shaped sticks have solid construction and draw easily. Flavors include white pepper, oak, cedar, caramel/toffee, cocoa, spices and honey. The finish is long, the ash is solid, and the burn is reliable.
Sample some of the best of what the Chateau has to offer; pick up a box of King Ts to put in your humidor today.