Guaimaro Cigars is the brainchild of Esteban Disla, co-owner of Nica Sueno, the cigar factory of RoMa Craft cigars. Disla partnered up with Skip Martin and Mike Rosales to create RoMa Craft Tobac which produces some of the hot cigars on the market. RoMa Craft’s most famous of which are the Cromagnon and Aquitaine lines, but Disla didn’t have his own line until they unveiled the Guimaro at the 2016 IPCPR. I was pretty excited to see this cigar as Disla is one of the most tobacco knowledgable people I know and also one of the nicest guys you will ever meet in the industry. Skip Martin sent out a press release about the Guaimaro:
Esteban Disla’s life in tobacco began in 1985, in Navarete, Dominican Republic.
This was the year that Esteban’s mother Elena Disla, who had spent her entire life working in the tobacco fields surrounding Navarete with her own mother, began working raw tobacco for Sergio and Luis Cuevas in the town’s first premium cigar factory, Tabacalera Cuevas & Hermanos.
Worried for her eldest sons, Elena convinced Sergio Cuevas to allow Esteban and his younger brother, Ceferino ‘Raul’ Disla, to gather and sort tobacco scraps before and after school in order to keep them out of the trouble that many young men found on the streets in the small and impoverished rural town.
Sergio Cuevas, a Cuban expatriate, quickly grew fond of the young boys and began the process of mentoring them and passing along the knowledge his family had developed over the generations since the Cuevas Family had settled, and began cultivating tobacco, in the Vuelta Abajo region of the Pinar del Rio providence in Cuba.
Cuevas, whom Disla refers to as his ‘Padrastro’, arranged for Esteban to come to Estelí, Nicaragua to help Carlos Toraño in his new factory, Nica Habano, in 1997. In 2000, this factory was closed and Disla moved to his position as the Chief of Production at Latin Cigar. Under his leadership, Latin Cigar grew its annual production from 700,000 to more than 13,000,000. Disla was a key contributor to the success of many brands in the first decade of the new millennium sold under the banner of companies like CAO, Torano, Gurkha and Newman.x
In 2008, STG acquired Latin Cigar and Disla transitioned to his role managing all aspects of the Esteli, Nicaragua tobacco operations. In 2011, he departed and co-founded Fabrica de Tobacos Nica Sueño with RoMa Craft Tobac co-founder, Skip Martin.
Over the last three years, Disla has been working to develop his own premium cigar brand.
“Tobacco is my life,” Disla says, ”I owe everything I am to Sergio Cuevas. He took a skinny black boy off of the streets and developed me into a man. He gave me a purpose in life, a profession, and I have dedicated every day to honoring his faith in me and the traditions of the craft that he entrusted to me. I can still hear his instruction, his advice, his reprimand. In the early days, he began referring to me in an affectionate manner; he called me by the name of the skinny, dark-skinned, young boys that would work on his family’s farms in Cuba. To this day, I can hear his voice speaking to me when I had done something to earn his praise and his respect: “Fenomenal, Guáimaro, Fenomenal”
Guaimaro Cigars are, strangely enough, not distributed by RoMa Craft, but by Pospiech Cigars which is an LLC with contains a distribution company, a cigar shop (Cigar Hustler), and a cigar line (Powstanie) owned by Mike and Gregg Szczepankiewicz. I recently meet Mike at the Texas Cigar Festival by Casa de Montecristo aka Serious Cigars where he was able to give me some info on the Guaimaro.
“Esteban Disla, the tobacco guru behind RoMa Craft Tobac, is finally getting his own cigar. At the 2016 IPCPR Convention & Trade Show, Guáimaro will be shown to the public. The three-size line uses a Mexican San Andrés wrapper, Brazilian Arapiraca Castaño binder and fillers from the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua.”
Let’s look at the specs:
- Wrapper: Mexican San Andreas
- Binder: Brazilian Arapiraca Castano
- Filler: Dominican and Nicaraguan
- Vitola: Robusto (also available in a corona and torpedo)
- Size: 5 x 52
- MSRP: $7.50
Pre-Light
The cigar has a nice matte brown leather look about the wrapper that looks really good on the boxed pressed cigar. The cigar has notes of leather, cedar and natural tobacco notes on the cold draw.
First Half
The first half starts off very smooth with notes of leather, cedar and dark chocolate with a hint of black pepper. The leather and dark chocolate are the most prominent. I get more spice on the retrohale. The finish is long and I get a slight saltiness on the back of my palette. The cigar is burning great with a nice mascara burn line and a perfect ash. The cigar produces a lot of smoke.
Second Half
The second half is pretty much like the first with the same flavors except now the cedar is the most prominent note. I still get the dark chocolate and leather, but they are much more faint compared to the cedar. I get the black pepper, but it’s toned down as well, except in the retrohale which is still a black pepper blast. The cigar is also developing an earthiness to it that gives the flavor profile a slight bitterness.
Overall Impressions
This is a quality cigar, but its to be expected from someone as knowledgable about tobacco as Esteban Disla. He, Skip Martin and Mike Rosales have been making outstanding cigars in the factory Nica Sueno in Esteli, Nicaragua for quite awhile now. Its no surprise that he would make a cigar as tasty as this one for himself. The cigar is very well balanced and flavorful, but with that being said, I think I prefer the corona a bit better (I haven’t smoked the torpedo size). It has similar notes, but I get some cinnamon spice with sweet biscuit and caramel notes. Overall, you can’t wrong with any of the sizes. The flavor plus the low price point make these a no brainer. I will definitely be in the market for a box of these soon.
