A Day at the La Corona Cigar Factory

Women cigar packers at the second cigar factory in Ybor City (University of South Florida )

(Cigar Aficionado) By 7:30 in the morning, Avenida 20 de Maio is bustling with buses, motorbikes and a steady stream of old cars passing in front of the La Corona Cigar Factory. The workers are filtering into the building, getting ready for another day of making cigars. Factory manager Roddy Manuel Valdez and Osmar Hernandez Fuente, his number two, are settling in to oversee one of the biggest cigar factories in Havana. The multistory building makes a host of cigars: Romeo y Julieta, Hoyo de Monterrey, Cuaba, Por Larrañaga, Saint Luis Rey, San Cristóbal de la Habana, and, like nearly every cigarmaking facility in Cuba, some Montecristos. Continued