With a deftness that comes from four decades of experience, Aristo Torres sorts tobacco leaves at a factory in Nicaragua -- a country making great strides in the manufacture and export of cigars.
Tobacco in the Central American nation is grown in volcanic soils that growers, merchants and consumers at the 11th Nicaraguan Cigar Festival agreed gives it a special something.
Nicaraguan tobaccos "have a very good body, are round -- they are tobaccos that are sweet, some are spicy," Colombian Andres Diaz Cote, a regular smoker of 57, told AFP at the fair held in the city of Esteli, some 150 kilometers (93 miles) north of the capital Managua.
"The way they burn is perfect," he insisted.
Nicaragua's tobacco industry emerged in the 1960s from the hands of Cuban migrants who had fled after the revolution there.
Around Esteli, they found the volcanic soils rich in minerals and nutrients, and a tropical climate perfect for tobacco plants.
Today, Nicaraguan cigars are smoked in more than 90 countries around the world, according to Juan Ignacio Martinez, president of the country's oldest tobacco company, Joya de Nicaragua.
Most are exported to the United States, where a ban on Cuban imports under sanctions in place since 1962 has cut consumers off from cigars from the communist island -- widely considered the best in the world.
There are about 150 companies around Esteli working in tobacco growing, processing, packaging and cigar making, added Martinez.
"I think the finest cigars in the world right now are coming from Nicaragua... People love Nicaraguan cigars," American businessman Rocky Patel, who also produces cigars in Honduras and the Dominican Republic, told AFP at the fair.
With the Covid 19 pandemic, Nicaraguan tobacco companies feared a downturn in business, but it was in fact the other way around.
With restrictions on movement worldwide, people took to smoking at home rather than at cigar bars, boosting sales.
"Starting in 2019 we had a high demand for tobacco... and this has greatly benefited the industry and Nicaragua as a country," Manuel Rubio, president of the Nicaraguan Tobacco Chamber, told AFP.
"Last year we had good results with approximately 180 million cigars exported... (worth) about $400 million," he added. "For this year we are projecting growth around 10 to 15 percent.
Some 35,000 people work directly in the tobacco sector in the department of Esteli, out of about 65,000 countrywide -- 56-year-old cigar maker Torres among them.
He explained with great patience and obvious pride his job of making the "bonchero" -- the basic mixture of leaves that goes into every cigar.
"It is something special," Torres told AFP of his trade.
"We have to learn a little more every day, to experiment to please the client. If we do not please the client, we are not doing anything at all."
