Watch fine art of handrolling cigars
digg it!
Facebook
del.icio.us
Seed Newsvine
Fark It
Reddit
BY CORY MATTESON / Lincoln Journal Star
Guillermo “Willy” Carrazana pre-ships a package of 800 handrolled cigars to whatever city he’s scheduled to visit. If he runs out, it’s no problem. Give him two minutes.
That’s all it takes for Carrazana, 58, a Cuban-born, lifelong roller, to crank out another custom-made smoke.
“One minute for the body, one minute for the wrapper,” he said.
Related Media
The Good Life from the Nebraska Cigar Festival
David Burge is looking for aficionados, Cubans and a slice of The Good Life at the Nebraska Cigar Festival (Anthony Roberts / JournalStar.com)....
Related Link(s):
The second Nebraska Cigar Festival begins at 7 p.m. Friday at the Pla Mor Ballroom, 6600 W. O St. The event costs $60, which includes six cigars, two drink coupons and hors d’oeuvres. Nonsmoking significant others can buy hors d’oeuvres tickets for $20.
Why you should not try this at home
About.com rates the difficulty of rolling a cigar as "hard," making it a more impossible task by the Web site's estimation than crafting a folk song or intermediate breakdancing. The steps seem easy enough: fill smoking tobacco into a binder leaf, roll the leaf, roll a wrapper leaf around that leaf, cut something, slap vegetable gum somewhere, then light it all on fire. No, it's actually really hard, and you will likely fail, and here's why.
1. Guillermo "Willy" Carrazana spent his youth at his grandfather's side in Cuba, learning from a lifelong roller before working at the famed Romeo Y Julietta factory for a dozen years. He's been perfecting his craft over half a century. With cigar rolling, experience is everything, and rolling Play-Doh cobras in second grade is not experience.
2. While a dollar bill has helped guide novice cigarette rollers, the theory does not hold true with larger pieces of paper and cigars - although that Derek Jeter cologne ad you tore out of Men's Journal would infuse your tattered wrapper leaf with a curious musk.
3. Much like the Gillette theory to advanced razor blade technology, Carrazana says five is better than four. He mixes five blends of tobacco into his cigars, creating a steady draw of smoke that mixes the flavors evenly. He said he can tell by touch if a cigar will have a good draw. Because your first rolled cigar will look like a dodgeball wedged in a liquor store brown bag, it will not have a good draw.
Carrying that average out over the three-hour Nebraska Cigar Festival, that’s another 90 cigars up for grabs if Carrazana doesn’t stop to take a draw off one of his own creations or maybe a quick sip of brandy — which he will.
Carrazana is the featured guest during the festival’s Friday event, and it’s the first time a cigar roller has been on hand, said Dallen George, a festival organizer.
So along with the six cigars, hors d’oeuvres, two drink coupons and brief distraction from watching your 401(k) cycle through a particle collider, a ticket to the festival gets you a firsthand look at a craftsman at work.
Carrazana honed his skills in the humid environ of Santa Clara, Cuba, where he said his grandfather Sesario Cardenas rolled cigars that ended up in the mouths of Capone and Hemingway. In the ’80s, Carrazana immigrated to America, where he has since carved out a custom cigar enterprise in the logical destination of … outlying Phoenix.
He gets none of his tobacco products from Chandler, Ariz., instead relying on Dominican tobaccos for his filler and year-old Connecticut shade for the wrapper.
Wherever he goes, he rolls by hand, using a traditional wood mold.
“The machine is terrible,” he said by phone from Chandler. “Too compact. Sometimes you smoke … nothing.”
That won’t be a problem at the Lincoln festival. The cigars that come with the ticket, and others that will be on sale, are handmade.
Reach Cory Matteson at 473-7438 or cmatteson@journalstar.com.
Post Your Comment
Standards and RulesYour posted comment will appear after it has been approved.
Frequently asked questions about story commenting.
and i love the juxtaposition of it being the day after the great american smokeout. "
33 hrs and counting wrote on November 20, 2008 8:50 am:
todd wrote on November 20, 2008 9:39 am:
rolling on the floor wrote on November 20, 2008 9:44 am:
fab wrote on November 20, 2008 2:28 pm:
Oral Cancer wrote on November 21, 2008 4:10 pm: