Cigars from Panama & Costa Rica
Panama
Cigars from Panama? This statement sounds rather unusual at first - many people tend to think of the world-famous waterway or the matching headgear when they hear the name. Like many other Central American countries, the southernmost one also looks back on a long history and offers a rich variety of flora and fauna in addition to enchanting coastlines.
The oldest traces of human settlement date back to around 2000 BC and the first Europeans arrived in this small country in 1501. Panama City quickly became an important transhipment point for trade goods from northern South America and western Europe. The Panama Canal serves as a symbol for this, perpetuating Panama's history as a crossroads between the worlds.
Almost 10 % of the land area of the Central American country with its tropical climate is used for agriculture, primarily for the cultivation of fruits, coffee, sugar cane and grain. The much cooler mountain regions, with their constant humidity all year round, are predestined for tobacco cultivation.
Costa Rica
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
When Christopher Columbus landed as the first European on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica in 1502 and suggested the name Costa Rica y Castillo de Oro for the newly discovered land, he had the dream of one day discovering an Eldorado with gold and precious stones in the Abounded. But he was wrong. Because what he and all the other conquerors did not see, or could not see, was the immense wealth of the flora and fauna prevailing there, as well as the breathtaking beauty of this small Central American country.
Almost 500 years later, Costa Rica has at least partially developed into the prosperous country that Columbus had dreamed of. The political stability that has prevailed in Costa Rica for decades, which is atypical for Central American countries, is unique. Only a few people know that there is a decent cigar industry in this Central American "Munsterländle". Perhaps also because Costa Rican tobaccos, despite their high quality, are often only used in bulk as binders and wrappers for tobacco products from other cigar countries.
In the specialist literature one can often read that there is still no flourishing cigar production in Costa Rica, since it is not worthwhile to rely on cigar production totalmente a mano due to the relative prosperity and the correspondingly higher wages. However, there are now some manufacturers that produce handcrafted cigars on a smaller scale and thus operate in the narrow premium segment. The market share of Costa Rican Puros is relatively small, as tobacco from other growing countries is often used for parts of the filler mixture and mainly binder and wrapper leaves are made from Costa Rican leaves.
