I've received several inquiries on this wrapper recently, so I figured I should try to understand more about it. I found this description of the process to be enlightening.
From
Within two hours, the heat will be at about 90 degrees, and by hour No. 3, it will rise to 100. "Always gradually increasing the heat," says Cura. After 40 to 48 hours, the tobacco has wilted. Then, it's time to unleash hell.
The leaf is dry at this point, save for the stem, which is a stubborn beast. The stem takes much more coercing to dry out than the rest of the plant. The farmers shut the bottom vents in the barn and crank the heat to 165 -- Cura remembers losing control a few times and watching the temperature rage to 175 -- to blast the remaining moisture from the stem. This final step lasts for about one day, and bakes the tobacco as dry as a potato chip.
"It's hot as blazes in there," says Cura. "It's like being in Arizona."
Reach up and touch the leaves in a normal tobacco barn and they feel like gummy, cool handkerchiefs. Do that in a candela barn (assuming you don't drop from the Death Valley conditions) and you'll be greeted with two eyefuls of shredded tobacco.
After 60 to 72 hours total in the barn, the chlorophyll has been locked in the leaf and the tobacco is done heating, but needs to be rehumidified so it can be safely removed from the barn.
Workers open the barn's vent doors and windows (unless it's windy), allowing the nighttime dew to make the crispy leaves moist again; if the climate is too dry, they bring in a steamer. Then, the leaves are taken down, sorted and graded, and put into boxes, ready for storage or for rolling. The fire curing eliminates the need for fermentation and aging, cutting months and even years off the typical process.
Quirks exist. Sunlight will make the leaf lighter; heat will darken the color. Candela wrapper can't be stored in normal tobacco warehouses; instead it's kept refrigerated. Water can stain it, so a roller has to know what he's doing in order to make a candela cigar by hand.
Because it's the process that makes candela, rather than the seed or country of origin, candela wrappers are grown in a host of countries. "You want tobacco that's been either shade-grown, or grown [in a place like] Ecuador, where there's no sunlight," says Perez-Carrillo.
Candela is, or has been, grown in Connecticut, Cuba, Ecuador, Florida, and Nicaragua, and for more than two decades it was the only type of wrapper tobacco grown in the Dominican Republic. Not all the leaves of a plant make good candela. "The tobacco up top of the candela turns a dark, dark green in the curing, and it's not what they're looking for," says John Oliva Sr., who runs Oliva Tobacco. "John Deere green, that's what they call it, as opposed to a 7-Up bottle green. You only have three colors in candela: yellowish green, a dark green and a green green."
From
To make candela, the barn has to be properly prepped. The walls of the wooden barn are wallpapered with cardboard or paper to seal the cracks. The barn is loaded with freshly harvested tobacco, and the vents at the bottom of the barn are opened, encouraging air to flow out of the roof vent (known as a doghouse), which is always open. The propane heaters or charcoal fires are lit, and the heat slowly rises, taking the moisture out of the leaves. "The objective is to get air flowing through the tobacco, up and out of the doghouse," says Gustavo Cura, the operations administrator for Oliva Tobacco Co. in Tampa, which grows candela in Ecuador and Honduras. "The heat has to start slowly."
Within two hours, the heat will be at about 90 degrees, and by hour No. 3, it will rise to 100. "Always gradually increasing the heat," says Cura. After 40 to 48 hours, the tobacco has wilted. Then, it's time to unleash hell.
The leaf is dry at this point, save for the stem, which is a stubborn beast. The stem takes much more coercing to dry out than the rest of the plant. The farmers shut the bottom vents in the barn and crank the heat to 165 -- Cura remembers losing control a few times and watching the temperature rage to 175 -- to blast the remaining moisture from the stem. This final step lasts for about one day, and bakes the tobacco as dry as a potato chip.
"It's hot as blazes in there," says Cura. "It's like being in Arizona."
Reach up and touch the leaves in a normal tobacco barn and they feel like gummy, cool handkerchiefs. Do that in a candela barn (assuming you don't drop from the Death Valley conditions) and you'll be greeted with two eyefuls of shredded tobacco.
After 60 to 72 hours total in the barn, the chlorophyll has been locked in the leaf and the tobacco is done heating, but needs to be rehumidified so it can be safely removed from the barn.
Workers open the barn's vent doors and windows (unless it's windy), allowing the nighttime dew to make the crispy leaves moist again; if the climate is too dry, they bring in a steamer. Then, the leaves are taken down, sorted and graded, and put into boxes, ready for storage or for rolling. The fire curing eliminates the need for fermentation and aging, cutting months and even years off the typical process.
Quirks exist. Sunlight will make the leaf lighter; heat will darken the color. Candela wrapper can't be stored in normal tobacco warehouses; instead it's kept refrigerated. Water can stain it, so a roller has to know what he's doing in order to make a candela cigar by hand.
Because it's the process that makes candela, rather than the seed or country of origin, candela wrappers are grown in a host of countries. "You want tobacco that's been either shade-grown, or grown [in a place like] Ecuador, where there's no sunlight," says Perez-Carrillo.
Candela is, or has been, grown in Connecticut, Cuba, Ecuador, Florida, and Nicaragua, and for more than two decades it was the only type of wrapper tobacco grown in the Dominican Republic. Not all the leaves of a plant make good candela. "The tobacco up top of the candela turns a dark, dark green in the curing, and it's not what they're looking for," says John Oliva Sr., who runs Oliva Tobacco. "John Deere green, that's what they call it, as opposed to a 7-Up bottle green. You only have three colors in candela: yellowish green, a dark green and a green green."
