Kauai’s tobacco grower

LIHUE — A Kauai coffee grower has found a new niche in the luxury cigar industry and says the labor-intensive specialty product could flourish on Kauai.

Les Drent was a Big Island coffee grower before he moved to Kauai to start Blair Estate Coffee in 2001. He captured an online market for his specialty coffee that he grows on three acres of agricultural land in Kapahi, but his main focus has been the Kauai Cigar Company since 2006.

The cost of producing an organic coffee is high and very labor intensive for a hand-picked bean operation. The popular roast can bring $45 per pound but the farm is limited to about 3,000 pounds a year.

After traveling to Cuba and learning the cigar making process from the ground up, Drent started his own tobacco plantation in 2006 and now has five fields around the island. They grow Cuban seed varieties, along with Connecticut Shade and an Ecuadorian grown Connecticut broad leaf wrapper.

“Cubans through breeding have created wonderful strains of tobacco, the Criollo 98, Corojo 92, Corojo 90, and Habano 2000,” Drent said. “All we do is take all these different seeds and grow them and see what thrives at different locations on Kauai.”

Drent produces 20 varieties, light and dark, like the Island Prince, Makahela and Hawaiian Vintage Series. The rings range from 35 to 60, and the length from 4.5 to 6.5 inches.

“Cuba is Cuba, and the soil, climate and process to create cigars is unique and Cuban,” he added. “We have our own breeding program, and we are creating our own special hybridized seed to grow here in Kauai.”

It is a steep learning curve that has paid off, he said. Visiting customers try one from a store in Hawaii and buy more online when they return to the Mainland. He now employs about 25 seasonal workers.

“It is very subjective, where one person absolutely loves the cigar and another says it not for me,” Drent said. “We are doing well and selling a lot of cigars through mail order and island stores.”

As of now, stores can place luxury cigars over the counter and on rack displays whereas other forms of tobacco need to be out of reach. Other sales come from providing open displays and samples at cigar boutiques and emporiums to all aficionados so they can try them all.

It is a meticulous process from planting to maturity. The plants start out as seedlings for six weeks in a float nursery on water before they are transplanted to the field for another six weeks.

Drent designed his own irrigation system that blends the fertilizers and water. The fertilizers are selected to fit organic requirements but also ensure that it does not affect the taste of the tobacco.

“There is good fertilizer and bad fertilizer,” he said. “We learned that you can have a beautiful looking tobacco plant that can also have a really poor taste.”

As the plants grow, the suckers, flowers and top leaves are cut to redirect the plant’s reproductive energy at the largest and healthiest 15 leaves before harvesting.

“The leaves can double in size over two weeks after topping,” he said.

The bottom five leaves are the volado. The middle five leaves are the seco, and the top five leaves are ligero.

“The ligero gives the full body, strength and the strong taste,” Drent said. “The lower leaves are known for milder burning characteristics, and the middle leaves are usually reserved for the roller wrapper tobacco and combustibility with a nice presentation of the cigar. The top leaf goes in the cigar in the middle for strength and aroma and tries to balance all the components.”

Each of the five farms grow different strains of tobacco. Drent can create his own tastes by blending the varieties together in the drying and fermenting processes.

The harvested leaves are hung in a barn for air curing and then stacked for the first fermentation process. The tobacco is neatly stacked as a pile, and as the temperature at the center reaches 105 to 108 degrees, the workers rearrange the tobacco, top to bottom, inside-out and continue the process again.

The initial fermentation lasts about 42 days. A successful process maintains relative humidity but dry enough to protect from mold.

“Then it is baled and shipped to Nicaragua, where an additional 32 employees there do further fermentation, the rolling and the final boxed cigar,” Drent said. “It takes over a year to get the cigars back after the tobacco is grown. It’s quite a process and it’s amazing.”

There are no middle men or distributors involved, Drent said. A successful modern farmer in today’s economic climate must “grow, manufacture and sell the final product directly to the stores and the customer because every penny earned from production is needed back to keep growing.”

“You have to be smart, savvy, aggressive and control the product from the field all the way to the customer,” Drent said.

The 50 pound boxes of tobacco make about 30 cigars, he said. An entire shipment can total 1,500 cigars at about $3,000 to $4,000 per box.

The cigars are shipped back from Nicaragua as orders are placed. The waiting helps offset a 40 cent per cigar federal shipping tax. A $2 state tax per cigar is applied to each cigar sold.

Drent is president of the Hawaii Cigar Association. As the only grower, he leads sellers and importers in shaping a voice on tobacco-related issues. He helped to draft Hawaii’s first premium cigar tax bill that would exempt premium cigars from a self-service tobacco display ban and reduce the state tax to 50 cents per cigar.

The Senate version passed 25-1 last session. The House version was deferred until 2014.

“The $1.50 per cigar we save on taxes would go to employ people to complete the fermentation process and make the cigars right here on Kauai,” Drent said.

“More than the weather, more than the competitors — most competitors stand together united in this fight — more than anything else, our biggest challenge is the government,” Drent said. “Both the federal level and the state level and also the county level.”

A lot of it has to do with attempting to recapture tax revenue from mail order and online transactions where the out-of-state consumer is responsible to pay, Drent said. The wholesale cigar house is regulated but more revenue is lost with consumer sales because it’s voluntary.

Premium cigars represent just 200 million units of nearly 2 billion large cigars sold annually, Drent said. Cigarettes are migrating into the premium cigar category to get around the flavored cigarettes laws, and the definition is solid and defensible in the bill.

Machine-made cigars do not use a homogenized leaf, Drent explained, but use cut fillers with chemically enhanced flavoring just to get around regulations and do not belong in the premium cigar category.

“Putting additives in a premium cigar is like dipping sushi in tarter sauce,” Drent said.

District 16 State Rep. Dee Morikawa said she felt it was appropriate to offer premium cigars some tax relief by changing the definition of large cigars. She said Department of Health and tobacco-free organizations voiced opposition and that is why the bill has stalled.

“I personally wanted to give our local company a break, but when you get into the health issues, more so the use of tobacco, the Department of Health’s concerns will prevail,” Morikawa said. “I’m sure this discussion will continue next session.”

Lila Johnson, RN, MPH, the program manger of the state Department of Health Tobacco Prevention and Education Program said the cigar bill is a tax-related piece of legislation but needed a health perspective.

“The philosophy is that higher taxes on products mean that less people will use it,” she said.

Johnson said the law requiring transactions between the clerk, vendor, and customer will be effective only if all tobacco is required to follow the ban on self-service displays in stores.

A state survey reported that 8.7 percent of kids reported smoking cigarettes and 4.5 percent for cigars in 2011. The numbers were 11.3 percent for cigarettes and 6.6 percent for cigars in 2009.

Johnson said this was due to education, awareness and policies. People can no longer smoke where they once could and are more aware. For the Department of Health to not oppose a premium cigar exemption, there would need to be special provisions to address these concerns.

“Cigars are not a safe alternative to cigarettes,” Johnson said. “They are so much larger and the nicotine level is worse.”

Valerie Saiki, coordinator for Tobacco-Free Kauai, said that cigars, regardless of how the tobacco is grown or processed, are not a safe alternative to cigarettes. Premium cigars, she said, should be treated no differently through state and federal regulations.

“Increasing trends in youth cigar smoking, negative environmental health impacts of tobacco farming and lowering taxes will not create parity with online sales,” she said.

John Hunt, the public health administrative officer for the Kauai District Office of the Hawaii Department of Health, said that tobacco prevention and cessation efforts have reduced the number of kids starting to smoke to the lowest rates in recent memory.

His concern is that tobacco agriculture on Kauai would change the perception of tobacco and that more people would smoke as a result.

“People don’t associate Kauai as a tobacco producer and it is disappointing that so many legislators are championing this as a small business tax issue,” he said.