Owned, operated, and headquartered in Miami, Florida, with agricultural and manufacturing facilities in Estelí, Nicaragua, Perdomo Cigars has grown into quite the tobacco juggernaut over the course of the past 30+ years.

From seed to cellophane, Perdomo Cigars handles it all, including the manufacturing of its bespoke line of cigar boxes, and to this day it remains the only cigar manufacturer to absorb the United States SCHIP federal excise tax. This means that every cigar within Perdomo’s portfolio is made more affordable courtesy of the owners viewing these fees as a "business expense."

Quality control and value are the name of the game for this legacy cigar brand too, as Perdomo remains one of the most vertically integrated cigar manufacturers on the planet. Outdoor agricultural operations for the brand are located in the lush valleys of the Estelí, Condega, and Jalapa regions of Nicaragua, with the aging, fermenting, and rolling side of things being near the downtown capital of Estelí. 

Everything from picking the plant seedlings and controlling cultivation, to curing, fermentation, formulating premium cigar blends, rolling, and distribution gets handled in-house. By exerting the additional effort and doing things the ”Perdomo Way,” every step of the cigar production process can be carefully monitored, controlled, and, if need be, augmented as needed.

Oh, and let’s not overlook the fact that while Nick Perdomo Jr. remains in charge of the Perdomo Cigars brand as founder and CEO, the blends and operations themselves are overseen by one of the greatest cigar makers of all time, Aristides Garcia, who recently turned 99 years young and is still working in the factory purely for the love of the craft. 

So what else makes the Perdomo legacy cigar brand so special? A ton. An entire metric ton…

How Perdomo Came to Fame

Although much of the cigar-smoking public believes that Perdomo Cigars started just a few decades ago, the truth is that the company’s roots go much farther back. It all started with Silvio Perdomo, who was born and raised just outside of Havana, Cuba. In the 1930s, Silvio was an apprentice for Cuesta y Cia, where he learned about the cigar industry and developed his love for the craftsmanship that goes into making hand-rolled premium cigars.

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Silvio worked his way up the ladder, as did his son Nick, who eventually found himself employed by the largest tobacco company in Cuba. But in 1959, Silvio was arrested during the conflicts of the Cuban Revolution and spent the next 14 years in prison. Meanwhile, Nick had nearly been fatally shot, and with Castro quickly tightening his grasp, dark times were in store for everyone until Silvio finally came home. 

However, both father and son survived this horrendous ordeal, and upon being granted permission to immigrate to the United States, the entire Perdomo family fled Cuba, never to return. One of these family members was Nick's son. A quick-witted lad who shared the same name with his father and carried the same unrelenting interest in cigars. Unbeknownst to anyone else in the family, it would be Nick Jr. who would one day return the Perdomos to a life rich in premium tobacco, and in the process, forge a legacy the likes of which the modern cigar business has not seen in a lifetime.

Flip forward to the early 1990s, and Nick Perdomo Jr. had settled into a career as an air traffic controller. But it was becoming all too obvious that American demand for premium cigars was on the rise. Forever the attentive type, Nick Jr. recognized that American cigar smokers wanted a certain style of smoking experience, and that it was oftentimes based purely upon mass market promotional appeal. Nick Jr. found himself disinterested in many of these blends, and yearned to show the cigar-smoking public that they deserved a richer, more rewarding smoke session. So with a meager budget in place, the 26-year-old entrepreneur opened Nick's Cigar Co., where he and his father, Nick Sr., produced the very first Perdomo cigars themselves in his garage.

Having never been much of a fan of Dominican tobacco, Nick Jr. found himself turning toward other sources for long-filler, binder, and cigar wrapper leaf options. Favoring robust Ecuadorian Sumatran tobacco for their earlier cigar wrappers, and not just in the long-filler, the Perdomo boys bucked the Connecticut Shade trend at the time, and soon found themselves earning widespread praise for their small-batch, stronger smokes.

It was 1992, and the "Great American Cigar Boom" was just getting its proverbial torch lit, and everyone wanted to get their cigar roll on. But due to market oversaturation, Nick Jr. found himself working harder than ever to remain competitive. Long hours, late nights, pinching pennies, and extensive stints on the road promoting products were all a fundamental part of the growth process. And do you know what? It worked.

By this point, business had already gotten to the point where entire tobacco bales were filling up precious real estate in front of the garage, and a larger production facility and full-time staff had become paramount to the company's continued growth. This would ultimately lead to the Perdomos signing a contract on the strip mall setup in South Miami pictured above, which allowed them to produce cigars on site, and then sell the smokes at factory-direct prices.

But when the one millionth cigar was sold in late 1994, less than two short years since opening, the Perdomo boys knew that it was time to move their primary operations down to Nicaragua. Nick Jr. had long yearned for his own farm, where he and his father could control operations from field forward. So, with a little more coin in the piggy bank, a Nicaraguan cigar "mothership" was slowly but surely constructed.

By 1995, the first Perdomo Cigars factory had opened in the capital of Estelí, Nicaragua, and thanks to America's continued infatuation with premium cigars, business was booming. But within four short years, the space proved to be entirely too restrictive in size for the demand that was coming in, and so a second, far larger factory was put into effect. In 1999, what would become known as "El Monstro" would lurch to life. An 88,000 square foot facility that has since been transformed into one of several tech-savvy warehouses.

Over the past twenty-five years, multiple expansions have spawned the creation of numerous other production facilities, with the Perdomo operations of today being one of the largest in all of Nicaragua. But just because these facilities are monolithic in stature and tech-savvy in nature doesn't mean that the Perdomo family isn't still doing certain things the old way...

Tobacco Nerd Note: Unable to make your way down to Nicaragua for a farm tour? You can always check out Perdomo's headquarters in Miami, where you can purchase cigars and accessories and enjoy a smoke in the company lounge.

New Meets Old: The Perdomo Process Explained

Call it "quality control overload” if you like, but Perdomo really does run a tight ship and has what many consider to be the strictest prerequisites in the biz. 

But this isn’t just about modern-day legacy cigar manufacturing. Environmental stewardship, sustainable tobacco crop propagation, and an unwavering dedication to keeping family at the forefront are just as much a part of Perdomo's purpose as getting the next big premium cigar blend to market.

Starting Small on a Big Scale

"Finca Natalie" is Perdomo’s top-producing tobacco operation. Housed just outside of Estelí, Nicaragua, this volcanic crater features grow houses and open field operations alike, with over 38,880,000 tobacco leaves being pulled from this location alone annually.

Relying upon a specialized roof that blocks 25% of sunlight (and all of the different rays and risks that come with it), the nursery tunnels are a hub of activity year-round. With their unique cloth walls encouraging airflow while keeping foreign contaminants and pests at bay, these elongated grow rooms are arguably the most crucial part of the entire operation.  

Out Into the Open

But whereas these tailor-made greenhouses utilize many modern methodologies and Perdomo-exclusive ingenuity, the open fields of tobacco outside of these nurseries favor a far more rustic approach. 

For centuries, tobacco farmers have used oxen as a means of churning up the compact, and often clay-rich soils of Nicaragua. Perdomo strives to keep this tradition alive by employing oxen and the hired farm hands that feed and care for the animals to plow and aerate the soil. 

Not only does this slow yet extremely effective method encourage the freshly transplanted tobacco plants to develop stronger root systems, but it also fertilizes the field with manure and ensures that the farm plot is slowly and meticulously inspected on a ground level. 

Getting Picky About Primings

All told, Finca Natalie produces around 9,720,000 tobacco leaves in a single growing season. All of these are handpicked, or primed, the old-fashioned way. Furthermore, Perdomo prefers to strip away or neglect any leaves toward the bottom of the plant, including certain areas within the seco sections of the tobacco plant.

Such a strict view of what is deemed usable on the tobacco plant is done for a few different reasons. Nick Perdomo Jr. remains adamant that even the lower seco primings from a tobacco plant tend to be more susceptible to damage, rot, and contact with both soil and fertilizers. This dedication to only using the very best that the tobacco plant has to offer means that merely 15 of the plant’s original leaves end up being used to make Perdomo's cigars.

Prime Time for Some Aging and Fermentation

While stringing tobacco leaves by hand is nothing special, Perdomo’s insistence on utilizing eucalyptus staves as support beams within the curing barn is an ingenious idea. Not only does the wood’s aroma repel insects, but it is also incredibly resilient and relatively lightweight, thus making it easy to handle. Additionally, due to the Eucalyptus tree’s rapid rate of growth, its usage remains an environmentally sustainable option. 

After hanging from these specialized poles for a set period of time, the cured tobacco is transferred to a separate warehouse, where it is layered into stacked bales called pilóns. There, these tobacco leaves sit, ferment, and slowly evolve in complexity, with wrapper leaves receiving a minimum of three years of fermentation.

Intentionally soaked with freshwater as needed, Perdomo's staff keeps this "controlled composting" stage in prime form year-round. Internally monitored to make sure that temperatures do not climb to a dangerous level, this slow fermentation process is where all of the naturally occurring toxins and impurities within the tobacco plant are removed. Inside of Perdomo's fermentation operations, you will find dozens upon dozens of these pilóns in various stages of maturation, each one weighing nearly two tons on average once wet. 

Once the desired temperature within a pilón is obtained for a specified amount of time, the pile is broken down and reconstructed to allow even bacterial decomposition rates across the board. This process will be repeated multiple times throughout the fermentation process, which, for a darker maduro cigar wrapper like that on the 20th Anniversary Maduro, can span well beyond 8 years in most cases.

Bring On the Bourbon Barrels

Perdomo is widely recognized for being one of the first cigar manufacturers to place tobacco inside of bourbon barrels.

By stuffing its best wrapper leaves inside of bourbon barrels, Perdomo has developed a way to encourage its top tobacco primings to evolve exponentially in both color and texture, as well as in aroma and flavor. Apparently, the layers of char within these American white oak bourbon barrels help "caramelize" the cigar, both in color and flavor. To this day, Perdomo remains one of the only cigar makers to conduct a secondary fermentation process on its wrapper leaves via the use of a barrel. In contrast, barrel-aged cigar blends from other cigar makers rely upon a binder that has been placed inside of a cask of some kind. That is, the cigar in its entirety is aged inside the oaken vessel post-production. 

While barrel-aging times vary, Perdomo prefers to keep its Connecticut Shade wrappers in barrels for at least six months on average to protect the integrity of this most fragile of leaves. Sun-grown wrappers for the Perdomo Anniversary Line receive a bit more barrel time, with eight months being the norm. Meanwhile, maduro versions get a solid fourteen months of bourbon barrel aging, making them one of the most sought-after barrel-aged cigars in the company's collection.

Tobacco Nerd Note: Tobacco legend Aristides Garcia, and his protege are responsible for keeping the quality control side of Perdomo's fermentation operations at the forefront. At 99 years young, the tobacco mastermind continues to show up to work, as tending to his post continues to be the man's motivation to get up every morning. With over 75+ years of experience in the cigar production biz, nearly thirty of which have been exclusively dedicated to the Perdomo Family, Senior Garcia is one of those living legends. Further proving that cigar smoke only enhances one's outlook on life.

Rockin’ and Rollin’

Perdomo Cigars is one of the few cigar manufacturers to use stainless steel cutting boards in lieu of wooden bench tables, for this encourages cleanliness and production accuracy. After the cigars are bunched, bound, rolled, and if applicable, pressed, each stick is placed in a temperature and humidity-controlled aging room for no fewer than six to eight months. These time frames vary depending upon the type of cigar wrapper on the outside, as well as the tobacco blend contained therein. 

All told, each cigar produced by Perdomo is inspected a whopping seventeen times before being deemed worthy of boxing and distribution. This includes a stringent draw testing stage, where every cigar is put on a flow bench to guarantee that a perfect puff can be achieved every time.

Parting Puffs

Regardless of whether or not you adore, dislike, or remain indifferent to Perdomo’s cigars, it is impossible to overlook the company’s success. A dogged determination to succeed, accompanied by an obsession with premium tobacco and unwavering quality control standards, has made the company one of the greatest cigar success stories to come out of the 1990s cigar boom.

Dedicated, diligent, and immeasurably creative when it comes to fermentation methods and formulating premium cigar blends, Perdomo remains a top contender in an increasingly competitive market. What began with no more than three cigar rollers and a duo of packers, who happened to be Nick Perdomo Jr. and his wife, Janine, has since evolved into an operation that employs approximately 4,800 people.

So next time you plan on packing cigars for a trip, remember what Nick Perdomo said about blowing smoke rings while sitting around the campfire. Cigars are meant to be a celebratory experience. A chance to set time aside for friends and family, and enjoy the camaraderie and nuances that only a premium cigar blend can offer.