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By Anita Snow, Associated Press Writer. Tue Feb 26.
HAVANA (AP) - A broad smile spread across his deeply creased face, world
renowned Cuban tobacco grower Alejandro Robaina opened this year's international
cigar festival inside a 16th-century Spanish fort with lots of rum, salsa and
smoke from the world's most coveted stogies.
"This a pleasure for me," said Robaina, who turns 84 on March 10.
This year's annual Habano Festival celebrates the fifth anniversary of the cigar
brand created in his honor, the Vegas Robaina.
Over at the next table, Cuban leader Fidel Castro (news - web sites)'s
eldest son, Fidelito, puffed away on a cigar as hot music groups Polo Montanez
and his band entertained hundreds of foreigners Monday with their Latin-style
country dance music.
About 600 cigar enthusiasts from 47 different countries will try out new
brands, visit tobacco plantations, and go to elegant receptions and a
$400-a-head dinner traditionally attended by Fidel Castro during the five-day
event.
The guest of honor, Robaina said he was also celebrating an especially good
tobacco growing year that yielded some of the finest cigar wrapper leaves he had
seen in some time. The wrapper — known in Spanish as the "capa" —
is the last cover that holds together a hand-crafted cigar and is crucial to
ensuring it burns evenly and provides an exceptional smoke.
"We have had a special year," he said. "We now have wrappers
to last for two or three years."
The general quality of the overall tobacco crop in the last year has been
high, as well as the quality of the finished cigars, Robaina said.
Nevertheless, he admitted that exports had fallen in recent months,
especially since the start of a world recession aggravated by last September's
terrorist attacks on the United States.
"When the economy is like this, it's normal," Robaina said. But he
said he was sure that cigar export sales would pick up as the global economy
improved "because the quality is getting better and better."
Cuba's cigars are among the world's most expensive. A box of 25 Cohiba "esplendidos"
costs $383.75 at one of Havana's many tobacco retail shops.
At least 70 percent of the Cuban cigar exports go to Europe. The other 30
percent is divided among other world markets, including the Middle East, Asia
and Canada.
The U.S. trade embargo on communist Cuba prohibits the sales of Cuban cigars
in the United States.
Shortly before last year's festival, Habanos S.A., a mixed enterprise
operated 50-50 by the Cuban government and the French-Spanish company Altadis,
announced that in 2000 the country had produced 153 million cigars for export,
up from 118 million in 1999. Habanos S.A., which sponsors the festival, has not
issued any export figures for the past 12 months.
Castro's government has honored Robaina numerous times over the years for
his contributions to one of the communist country's most important export crops.
Robaino has worked in his family's tobacco growing business in western Pinar
del Rio state since he was 10. He admits that he has started to turn many of the
larger responsibilities of the enterprise to his son and his grandson. But he
denied recent reports that he is planning to quit.
"I could never retire," he said. "I could never stop working." | 
