written & photographed by Andrew Marshall

Cigar aficionado Andrew Marshall makes a pilgrimage to Havana to visit the Partagas cigar factory and sample the hedonistic delights of the city’s cocktail and cigar culture. A MAN’S VOICE CRACKLES OVER AN ANTIQUATED LOUD SPEAKER SYSTEM as he reads a chapter from a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, the words fi lling the vast room where dozens of men and women listen. With heads bowed over long wooden workbenches and their hands methodically rolling, chopping and tucking, they create Cuba’s most famous product. I am inside the world famous Partagas factory in Havana and this has been the unchanging scene of cigar making since 1845. For a cigar afi cionado like myself, this is “the pilgrimage”, for it is here that some of the world’s fi nest cigars are handcrafted, from the powerfully rich Cohiba Robusto to the magnifi cent Partagas Double Corona. Factory tours take around one hour, and cover the various stages of cigar production. Starting in the selection room, where sorters grade the various tobacco leaves, and ending in a tiny room where the fi nished cigars are packed into cedar boxes, which are then pasted with their offi cial green and white seals that confi rm authenticity. But it’s in the rolling rooms, the galeras, the very heart and soul of the cigar making process, that I am able to fully appreciate the craftsmanship that has been handed down through generations of cigar rollers. The pungent aroma of rich tobacco leaf mingles with cigar smoke as several rollers enjoy the fruits of their labour while they work. Rolling is a prestigious job, and only the skilled get to roll famous cigar types like the Cohiba Esplendido and Montecristo No.2. Using only a metal knife, a wooden board, a small guillotine and a bit of vegetable gum, most rollers make around 100 to 150 cigars a day. But I have to say I’m a little disappointed not to witness any Cuban women rolling them on their thighs. In the next room, 64-year-old Roberto Gomez’s job is to inspect the gauge size and uniformity of the fi nished product. The quality control is thorough, and Gomez places to one side any cigars that don’t make the grade. “I’ve been doing this job for 25 years now,” he says, taking a deep puff on a Bolivar Belicoso. “Reckon I can tell a good cigar from a bad one.”

If a Partagas factory cigar tour is the pilgrimage, then the Holy Grail is the Havana cigar itself, smoked in any of the city’s timehonoured cafés or bars. Before leaving the factory, it’s almost mandatory to visit the shop on the ground fl oor to select a cigar (or buy a box) and you needn’t go further than the adjoining cigar bar, La Casa del Habano, to smoke it.

The faces of various celebrities that have enjoyed the combination of a fi ne cigar with a Cuban cocktail in this dark atmospheric saloon, smile up from their autographed photos in an album on the bar top. This is defi nitely the place where you wouldn’t be surprised if you bumped into the likes of Jack Nicholson or Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It’s early evening, and lighting up one of my favourite cigars, a superbly spicy Montecristo No.2, I hit the streets and stroll past the Grand Capitolio National inspired by the US Capitol building in Washington, and hang a right in to the back streets of Old Havana. Despite decades of economic decline, the old magic of Havana shines through like a scratchy, crackling scene from a 1950s Cary Grant movie. It was this very magic that attracted people like authors Ernest Hemingway and Graham Greene, most of Hollywood, the Windsors and the Churchills.

Smoking my cigar, I’m easy prey for the black market street peddlers who zero in. “Hey my friend, where are you from? You want good cigars? I have Montecristos for US$60 a box?” This is much less than I’d just paid, but at least I could be assured of not having bought fakes. “Sorry, I already have some,” I reply, and conveniently escape through the doors of El Floridita, to imbibe the bar’s infamous cocktail, the Daiquiri.

In addition to cigars, Havana has long been famous for its cocktails, and while El Floridita didn’t invent the Daiquiri, it certainly reinvented it by introducing an electric iceblender into the equation in the 1920s. Served up by red-jacketed barmen who make a great show with their cocktail shakers, these frosty dreams of rum, lemon juice, sugar, maraschino cherry and crushed ice, are just the thing to combat the heat outside.

Ernest Hemingway spent over 20 years living in Cuba, and many an hour sipping Daiquiris and smoking cigars in this hallowed haunt. Another Cuban cocktail is the Mojito (rum, lemon juice, sugar, soda, mint leaf and ice cubes, stirred) made famous by the Nobel prize-winning novelist when he penned “my Daiquiri in the Floridita and my Mojito in the Bodeguita” on one of the walls of La Bodeguita del Medio bar. Since Hemingway’s time, a visit to this funky bar has become de rigueur, and other notables such as Nat King Cole and Fidel Castro have left their autographs on the wall.

An ancient Oldsmobile rumbles down Calle Opispo, Old Havana’s main thoroughfare, as I head for La Bodeguita, nearly pinning me against the crumbling walls of a building as its hulk practically fi lls the narrow street. When I arrive, the place is crammed with hoards of tourists all drinking Mojitos, so I decide to visit the nearby La Lluvia de Oro instead. Besides, the Mojitos here are half the price and go down well with the sizzling salsa beat of a live band. From the popular lunchtime haunt of Café Paris to the cool neo-deco atmosphere of Café Del Orient, there is no shortage of bars and cafés to try within walking distance of Old Havana. All are great venues to pursue the hedonistic delights of sampling various cocktails, while savouring on the palate the rich coffee-laden, spicy overtones of a hand rolled Cuban cigar.

Classic Havana taxis.

Restaurante el Patio sprawls out across the Plaza de la Catedral.

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