There is a lot to say about coffee and cigar pairing, they match quite nicely, but as a cigar aficionado, I came to think about that a lot of coffee producing countries also produce excellent leaves of tobacco for cigars! Tobacco is grown in rich, well drained (volcanic) soils in warm climates so it’s no big surprise to see that where you can find good coffee, at least at the lower altitudes, you could grow and can find tobacco as well.
If you take a look at the tobacco producing countries below and compare it with the coffee producing countries, you can notice a nice fit. The countries of the coffee belt coincide with those on the tobacco producing countries map below.
Over 50% of the taste of a cigar comes from its cover leaf, the wrapper, and that’s the most expensive part of a cigar. The filler leaves contribute a bit to taste as well but are mainly for combustion. Relatively to coffee, tobacco growing is not cheap at all and it needs a lot of fertilizer and pesticides, so you will not find a lot of small tobacco farmers as they cannot afford the costs of growing tobacco for cover leaves. Growing tobacco or coffee is not a very lucrative business, in both cases the gains are in the processing and trade of the final product, leaving the farmers with next to no profit.
But let’s get back to coffee and cigars and take a trip around the world. The biggest tobacco producers are China, India, Brazil and the USA. This takes into account tobacco grown for cigarettes as well and as we are interested in coffee and tobacco for cigars this means no visit to China (after all, they hardly drink any coffee), India and the USA. In fact, all the top quality cigar tobacco producing countries are found in Latin America. Although we can find good tobaccos as well in Africa and Asia they are not used a lot in quality cigars
Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Ecuador, México and Cameroon (at least one outsider!) are the countries that produce the best tobaccos for cigars. We can see some famous coffee producing countries on this list and even some lesser known ones. Let’s take a closer look at those!
The Dominican Republic
There are five major coffee producing regions, four of them being in the mountain range that runs from east to west, and it is there in the highlands that the best Arabica coffee is found. Sometimes Dominican coffee is referred to as “Santo Domingo”. The four main market names are Cibao, Bani, Ocoa, and Barahona. All excellent coffees with only the best of reputations.
Ecuador
Ecuador is known to be one of the world's most biologically diverse countries and coffee is one of the most important export products. About 60 to 70% of Ecuadorian coffee is Arabica. High altitude coffees at the slopes of the Andes are to be found of course, but there are other interesting ones as well: Ever heard of the Galapagos Islands? Coffee is also grown there and the rich volcanic soil makes quite a coffee although it grows at relatively low altitudes.
Cameroon
Although most Cameroon coffee is Robusta, Arabica coffees can be found mainly in the western highlands: Bamileke and Bamaoun are production regions. After declining production levels since 1990 and farmers’ cooperative initiatives in the late 1990s to cultivate and process high grade organic Arabica coffee, in 2014 the government launched a plan to revive the coffee sector. Let’s hope their efforts bear fruits and we can enjoy their nice coffees.
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