2010/03 – XII Festival del Habano – El Laguito Visit

10 Mar

The Portmann group at El Laguito

El Laguito Visit

A visit that was postponed and then re-arranged and that all newcomers in the group were looking forward to, the legendary El Laguito, Cohiba factory.

El Laguito is under new management by Lic Sr Arnaldo Ovalles, a young and engaging man who has worked his way up at the factory after quitting his former job as a teacher 12 years ago.

To coffee and a Siglo VI from the guest humidor he gave us information on the new BHK line that is manufactured exclusively at EL, the Medio Tiempo leaf that is used exclusively on the BHK after being re-activated from 30 years of obscurity and neglect and accepted questions.

The questions were the same we have been asking during the last visits and so were the answers.

All questions were very interesting and will be passed on to the correspondent department, mostly the marketing dept. that will deal with them in workshops.

I found one suggestion we passed on specially interesting – to build a completely new factory to manufacture all of the Cohibas and turn EL into a museum. Would tremendously facilitate quality control.

We then toured the factory with gracious Sra Berta before taking a group picture and saying farewell.

As for the former director Sr Miguel Brown : He has been assigned temporary duty managing/organizing the communal elections in Havana.

Nino