Tabacalera A. Fuente y Cia
The Fuente family's Santiago factory, established in 1980 after the loss of their Nicaraguan plant and now among the largest family-owned operations in the country.
The Fuentes arrived in Santiago in 1980, having lost their Nicaraguan factory to the revolution the previous year and their original Tampa premises to fire decades before. What they built in the Dominican Republic became the family's permanent base and one of the largest handmade cigar operations in the country, reported at over thirty million cigars a year by 2010.
The factory produces the full Arturo Fuente range, from everyday Chateau Fuente sizes to the Hemingway figurados, which require the most experienced rollers in the building. It also has a dedicated area for Fuente Fuente OpusX, with cabinet aging rooms for finished cigars. Fuente's roller training programme and its use of figurado shapes are among the most closely studied in the industry.
Beyond its own brands the plant is a major contract manufacturer, making Ashton for Ashton Distributors and Diamond Crown for J.C. Newman, relationships that have both run for decades. The company remains family-owned and is led by Carlos Fuente Jr. and Cynthia Fuente Suarez. The factory is not generally open to the public, and the Fuente family has kept its production figures and blend specifications closely held.