A Growing Vision: Hawaiian Tobacco

(Cigar Aficionado) ... The Grand Alii (pronounced ah-lee-ee) is sort of Drent’s Holy Grail. Alii means “royalty” in Hawaiian. The cigar is, or will be, a puro made of tobacco grown only on his farm in Kauai. Drent has been growing cigar tobacco in Kauai since 2006. On a visit to a friend’s hot-house garden, Drent saw a plant he didn’t recognize. It was a tobacco plant. “Tobacco grows wild around Kauai. Mostly Sumatra [seed],” Drent explains, sitting on the porch of his house in Kapa’a. Drent’s friend gave him the first tobacco seeds. Continued