48 TOBACCO BUSINESS | NOVEMBER / DECEMBER | 22 Cuba Aliados, Puros Indios and Cienfuegos (brands now owned by Oliva Cigar Company). Kafie’s family had roots in Central America and Honduras, so he wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with tobacco and the very traditional cigar industry. Just as he had donewith hismedical career, Kafie looked toward theReyes family for education and hands-on experience. “This industry is about learning from the best,” he says. “Going back in time, the Reyes family was at the top of their game. Also, being in Honduras gave me the opportunity to connect once again with my native country and the people of Honduras. At the time, I had this deep desire to bring the best of Honduras’ tobacco culture forward and shed some light on the country once again.” When his pseudo apprenticeship was over, Kafie was ready to start building his own cigar brand. The inspiration behind Kafie 1901 Cigars came from the love he has for his family and its deep roots in Honduras. He describes his grandfather, Don Chucri Kafie, as being “a fearless entrepreneur who believed in Central America, Honduras and family” and his grandmother, Doña Regina Kafie, as being responsible for overseeing her family of 12 in the city of Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Kafie’s grandparents have passed, as have all of their children, leaving behind the third and fourth generations of the family to carry on their story and traditions. One way that they do this is by investing in different businesses in Central America and Honduras with the hope that their contributions will help make the region and countries within it thrive and become a better place for locals to live and work. “My inspiration to create the brand Kafie 1901 was to develop a romantic connection between the soil of the region and our ancestors,” he says. “I feel in my heart and soul that the Kafie family represents a very special group of individuals to the region, and I felt a premium cigar brand would honor our family in the highest forms as premium cigars usually attract quality people in search of quality experiences.” Kafie Cigars was founded in 2013 with the business goal of creating highly memorable experiences for cigar and coffee connoisseurs around the world. Kafie Cigars represented the Kafie family, its history in Honduras and Dr. Gaby Kafie as a person. TheDreamBlend Over the course of nine years, Dr. Kafie has worked diligently to build his premium cigar brand. He opened and ran his own cigar factory, Tabacalera G. Kafie y Cia., in Danlí, Honduras. He also developed four different blends to expand his brand. The Don Fernando Maduro Collection was created using a 5-6-year-aged Cuban Seed Habano wrapper that was grown in Nicaragua. This blend is what Kafie often referred to as being the foundation of the Kafie 1901 Cigars lineup. The Kafie 1901 Connecticut took nine months to create due to the inability to find a suitable wrapper. This medium-bodied cigar has a shade-grown wrapper from Ecuador, and its binder contains tobaccos from three different countries. The Kafie 1901 Sumatra’s wrapper was sun-grown in Ecuador and consists of long-filler tobacco from Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Nicaragua. Kafie explains that it’s the Cuban seed Habano binder that gives this blend the balance that today’s cigar smokers are looking for. The Kafie 1901 San Andres has tobaccos from five different countries. This box-pressed cigar is among the strongest in Kafie Cigars’ portfolio and is a blend fit for festive, celebratory occasions. Each blend was developed with the end goal of Kafie Cigars being able to offer cigar smokers with a wheelhouse of flavors that they would enjoy. Varietywas key, and thusKafie neverwanted to stickwith just one particular type of tobacco or cigar blend. “We wanted to cover the spectrum from light to medium to full-bodied cigars,” he says. “Over the past eight years, we have only developed five premium cigars in the Kafie 1901 Core line, the fifth being our Kafie 1901 Serie L Natural, which will be making its debut in the weeks to come.” The fifth blend presented the biggest challenge to Kafie and also sparked one of the biggest changes in his company. By 2019, Kafie began experiencing issues that stemmed from his business being based in Honduras. That year, he started working on a blend that he was never able to finish because he didn’t have the right tobacco. He wanted to create a cigar that was entirely made of Dominican-grown tobacco. Kafie felt a puro was what his company needed, but natural disasters like hurricanes and supply chain issues caused by the pandemic prevented him from creating what he envisioned as his “dream blend.” “I wasmissing a quality natural shade wrapper to complete the blend I was trying to build,” he says. “From 2017 to 2020, our company was producing top-quality premium cigars in Honduras, three of which were nominated for best value cigar, best Honduran cigar and best brand-Honduras by Cigar Journal magazine. In light of coming short from winning, we were really doing good work at the time, and our reputation for producing quality cigars was spreading. However, in late 2019 and in 2020, Honduras was devastated by two major hurricanes, and to this day Honduras is still feeling the aftereffects of the pandemic. Forces out of my control made it so that if we wanted to continue to produce a variety of quality premiumblends we needed to look elsewhere for tobacco.” Kafie worked closely with his attorney and others in the industry to find a solution to his problem. That’s when someone suggested that he look into La Aurora Cigars, a prominent factory located in the Dominican Republic. “I had always admired the history of La Aurora and the quality cigars they produce,” he says. “When I got the chance to visit the factory and see their operations firsthand, it was a no-brainer. Building great cigars is about tobacco inventory and tobacco experience. I quickly came to realize that there was no better place for Kafie 1901 Cigars or myself than La Aurora.” The more Kafie learned about La Aurora and the history of the family behind it, the more he felt it would be a good fit for his company’s production This year, Kafie 1901 Cigars revealed a new look for its various brands as it shifted production to the Dominican Republic’s La Aurora factory.
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