Arturo Fuente learned the art of cultivating tobacco and manufacturing handmade cigars from his father in Cuba. The Fuente family left Cuba for the United States at the turn of the twentieth century and established their business in legendary Ybor City, Tampa. Arturo’s son, Carlos, Sr., was virtually born into the cigar business in as much as his first home served as the Fuente cigar factory in Tampa. Carlos, Sr., worked at the factory everyday after school learning how to blend tobaccos and the ritual of rolling cigars by hand. Today, the family’s rich cigar heritage spans four generations.
When producing cigars by hand became a lost art in Tampa, Carlos Sr. opened a factory in Nicaragua, but that fledging operation was burned to the ground by the rebel Sandanistas. Later, a second factory in Honduras was also demolished by fire.
In 1980 the Fuentes opened their first factory in the Dominican Republic with seven employees. They harvested their first wrapper tobacco in 1992 from Chateau de la Fuente, their tobacco plantation. This wrapper tobacco is the Fuente family’s pride, because it was a project nobody thought they would be able to pull off. No one had successfully harvested wrapper tobacco in the Dominican Republic at the time.
Today the Fuente family has over 1800 employees in four factories in Santiago, Dominican Republic. The Arturo Fuente ® brand is the most sought-after premium cigar in America. Due to consumer demand, there is usually a back order for most of the Arturo Fuente ® shapes.