An all-consuming passion for cigars and an unwavering dedication for quality are the unsurpassed characteristics of the Fuente family, the world’s most famous cigar markers. The Fuente family’s tobacco roots go back to the old world of nineteenth century Cuba. Born in 1887, Arturo Fuente learned the art of cultivating top quality tobacco and manufacturing handmade cigars from his father in Cuba. In 1906, Arturo immigrated to Key West, Florida where he rolled his first cigars in America. Arturo next moved his family to Tampa, Florida’s Ybor City, which was then the cigar capital of the world. In 1912, Arturo rolled the first cigars bearing the Fuente family name.
Arturo’s son, Carlos, Sr., was virtually born into the cigar business as his home served as the first
Arturo Fuente cigar factory. Every day after school, Carlos, Sr., worked at the factory learning how to blend tobaccos and the family tradition of rolling cigars by hand. Not long after Arturo Fuente passed the family business down to his son, Carlos, Sr., Carlos Fuente, Jr., was born. Carlos, Jr.’s early life was a mirror image of his father’s. He, too, was born in the family’s home and factory, and each day after school, he, too, learned the family tradition.
Adversity, in the form of embargoes, revolutions and four major fires, has never been able to negatively affect the Fuente family’s passion; rather, it has strengthened their resolve to produce the world’s finest cigars. When hand making cigars became a lost art in Tampa, Carlos, Sr., opened a cigar factory in Nicaragua, but that fledging operation was burned to the ground by the rebel Sandinistas. Later, a second factory in Honduras was also demolished by fire.
In 1980, the Fuentes opened their first factory in the Dominican Republic with just seven employees. One of the first cigar brands the Fuente family made in their new factory was Montesino. The superior quality of Arturo Fuente cigars quickly established a loyal core of cigar consumers, which necessitated the building of a second factory. Today the Fuente family has over 2,500 employees in four factories in Santiago, Dominican Republic. For years, Arturo Fuente has remained the most sought-after premium cigar in America and the Fuente family has been internationally recognized as the world’s finest cigar maker.
One of the earliest cigars Arturo Fuente hand made was a perfecto-shaped cigar called Arturo Fuente Fancy Tales. However, by the middle of the twentieth century, making shaped perfecto cigars was a lost art. No one made them any more. Remembering the classic Cuban perfecto cigar shape that his grandfather used to roll, Carlos Fuente, Jr., decided to honor his grandfather by introducing the perfecto-shaped Arturo Fuente Hemingway series in 1983. As perfecto-shaped cigars are very difficult to roll, quantities of Arturo Fuente Hemingway cigars remain very limited. A number of other cigar makers have followed the Fuente family’s lead by making their own perfecto-shaped cigars. Arturo Fuente Don Carlos cigars are named in honor of their creator, cigar legend and Cigar Aficionado “Cigar Hall of Fame” member, Carlos Fuente, Sr. One of the Fuente family’s greatest accomplishments is the overwhelming success of Chateau de la Fuente, the Fuente family’s now legendary tobacco plantation in the Dominican Republic. It was the Fuente family’s longstanding dream to one day produce extraordinary cigar wrapper leaves in the Dominican. Many other cigar makers had tried to grow wrapper leaves there before, but all had failed. So-called experts advised the Fuentes that conditions on the island were not conducive for such a project. But Carlos Fuente, father and son, believed in their passionate dream, and in 1991 they were determined to prove the naysayers wrong by growing their first crop.
Today the Fuente dream is a reality. International cigar experts and critics have unanimously agreed that the silken Chateau de la Fuente wrapper leaves have no equal anywhere in the world. In late 1996, Chateau de la Fuente was expanded when the Fuente family acquired a second tobacco plantation in the Dominican Republic that is blessed with rich soil and ideal weather conditions.
The special exquisite wrapper leaves grown at Chateau de la Fuente are used to make Carlos Fuente, father and son’s greatest creation, the legendary Fuente Fuente OpusX. Of all of their achievements and successes, the Fuente family is most proud of the Cigar Family Charitable Foundation (CFCF), a 501(c) (3) non-profit organization they founded in 2001 with the Newman family. CFCF has raised over $3 million dollars to build schools, heath clinics, recreation facilities,
and clean drinking water stations in the impoverished communities that surround the Chateau de la Fuente in the Dominican Republic.
Cigars are more than a century-old Fuente family tradition. Cigars are also the Fuentes’ passion and love. When asked for the reasons for the success of Arturo Fuente cigars and their estate-grown tobaccos, Carlos, Jr. explained that it all is due to hard work, dedication to perfection and their overall passion for cigars.
“We are a family business,” Carlos Fuente, Jr., said. “Our factories and our plantations comprise our
family ‘kitchen.’ By staying in the kitchen, we’re able to consistently produce outstanding tobacco
leaves and rich flavored, perfectly balanced cigars that please cigar aficionados every time, every-
where. And because tobacco is in our blood, that is all my family and I ever aspired to achieve.”
An all-consuming passion for cigars and an unwavering dedication for quality are the unsurpassed characteristics of the Fuente family, the world’s most famous cigar markers.
