As indicated in last week’s video exploration of InterTabac 2015, Ben and I spent some time Dortmund, Germany. But that was actually the second leg of the journey. The first leg we spent in Belgium, and the highlight of that portion of the trip was our tour of the Royal Agio factory in Westerlo.
You’ve probably seen a lot of video and photography depicting the process of creating a boutique, hand-made cigar. Boutique hand-made cigars is really what we’re all about at Stogie Review. But after going on this tour, I can say that it is every bit as interesting (and impressive) to see a machine blend, roll and package cigars rapidly and with precision. It’s difficult to put into words the impressive scale of Royal Agio’s operation, so I’ll let the video below handle that.
The video below captures our tour from beginning to end, and is about 54 minutes long. Be advised that there is some inconsistency in volume and lighting due to proximity to machines and other factors of a factory at work. As it is a long video, here are some shortcuts to different parts of the tour (these links will open in YouTube):
- The Curing Barn (5:18)
- Cold Storage (17:7)
- Tobaccos of the World (19:13)
- First Machine: Loosening Tobacco (20:18)
- Shaken, Stirred and Steamed (27:28)
- The Classifiers (29:42)
- Photographic Flaw Detection (31:09)
- Blending Talk (31:26)
- Blending in Progress (33:53)
- Ben’s Reaction (35:32)
- Agio’s History (36:19)
- Cigars Made By Machine (45:13)
- Cigars Being Packaged (51:43)
The Full Tour
