Tabacco Tradizionale

Tabacco Tradizionale
Words: Wolfgang Boller | Pictures: Robert Hack
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The feel-good factor is dependent as much as anything else on the right climate. As epicures
know, for something to become pleasurable to consume, the climate in which it is grown and
produced has to be right. At Manifatture Sigaro Toscano in Cava de’ Tirreni in southern Italy, the
right climate for people as well as product is provided by MTU Onsite Energy.
The composer Giacomo Puccini loved one, as did Italian unification hero Giuseppe Garibaldi and film
stars Marcello Mastroianni and Bud Spencer. The Italian cigar or Toscano is one of the clichés of Italian
style and lifestyle. When it comes to way of life, culinary pleasures and design, the Italian way has a
reputation as something different and special. And Italian-made cigars are no exception to that rule;
unlike many others they are not round, but elliptical or conical, and come in many different flavors. But
the most important thing is that they are made of Kentucky tobacco – the sort usually made into pipe
tobacco, except in Italy, or more precisely, Cava de’ Tirreni, a little town close to the world-famous
Amalfi Coast.
Pure aroma
When you visit the factory at the end of a narrow street alongside the busy Salerno-Naples autostrada,
the heavy, tangy, but sweet aroma hits your nostrils as soon as you reach the car park and gets stronger
with every step. Only a small sign announcing 'Manifatture Sigaro Toscano' gives any clue as to the
aroma's source – this is where the classic Italian cigars are made. Even the smallest Italian tobacconist
will have a selection of them. And there are connoisseurs all over the world who prize these special and
strongly aromatic cigars very highly.
It all started with a mishap
But that was not always the case. "Once upon a time in Italy, there were expensive cigars for the
gentlefolk and cheap ones for the poor," relates Gaetano Marino, technical director at Manifatture Sigaro
Toscano. Those class barriers were broken down by a slight misadventure. When in 1815 near
Florence, a large batch of tobacco was soaked through in a heavy thunderstorm, dried out in the sun
and started to ferment in the process, it was considered spoiled. So it was used to make cigars for the
poor. But fermentation had given the Kentucky tobacco a very unusual flavor. "It wasn't just the lower
classes who liked it – word soon got round to the wealthy as well. That was the start of our success,"
says Gaetano Marino, who is respectfully addressed as "ingegnere" in these parts.
Two weeks of cozy warmth
These days, that thunderstorm is artificially recreated indoors – under controlled conditions. In other
words, the tobacco is dampened, packed into shoulder-high crates and placed in the fermentation room.
"Every three days, we turn over the tobacco so that fermentation progresses evenly and no mold forms,"
explains Angelo Bencivenga, chief supervisor in Cava de’ Tirreni. He opens the side of one of the crates
being taken to the start of the long tobacco processing line. It is insulated so that the heat produced by
fermentation is held inside. "In this process, the tobacco can reach a temperature as high as 65°C," he
says. The warm air in the room where tonnes of tobacco are fermenting in dozens of crates is heavily
saturated with the smell of tobacco – not the ideal atmosphere for humans but perfect for the tobacco.
Once fermentation is complete, the cozy rest period is at an end. "Now the tobacco is prepared for cigar
production," explains Angelo Bencivenga. A stacker truck driver tips a good half-tonne of Italian
Kentucky tobacco into a large metal hopper. Conveyor belts carry the dark brown leaves from one
processing station to the next. Rollers, cutters, strainers and fans spread out, chop up, sort and dry the
leaves. At the end of the process, Angelo Bencivenga points out the evenly cut tobacco flakes that will
subsequently be used to make the inside of the cigars. The thick panicles and stalks have been filtered
out.
Energy system gives up smoking
Gas plays an important role in production. That is because a gas-driven Combined Heat, Cooling and
Power Module (CHCP) supplied by MTU Onsite Energy caters not only for electric power but also the
required atmospheric conditions. "We have to have constant, controlled conditions from start to finish.
That is how we ensure the quality of our products," says Ingegnere Marino. Air temperature and
humidity have to be exactly right for fermentation, processing, storage and drying. That requires a lot of
energy. In the summer, of course, the hot Mediterranean climate goes some of the way to keeping the
rooms at the required temperature. However half of the electricity for the controlled-climate cabinets
where the cigars dry and mature, for example, is produced by the cigar factory itself. "That is
significantly cheaper than electricity from the public grid," says Marino. 20% comes from a photo-voltaic
array and 30% is generated by an MTU Onsite Energy gas-driven CHP module. This was installed in
2011 to replace the old steam boiler that ran on heating oil. Now, a low-emission, 12-cylinder Series 400
gas engine purrs reassuringly in the room next door. The factory chimney has ceased to emit black
smoke. The energy system at Sigaro Toscano has managed to kick the smoking habit.
Power, heat and cooling, all from gas
The gas that fuels the engine is natural gas from the national grid. As technical director from the head
offices in Lucca, Gaetano Marino is still proud of the system installed here three years ago. Besides the
electrical power generated by the CHP module – up to 375 kW – Sigaro Toscano also harnesses the
waste heat from the engine to provide comfortable temperatures in the office, even in summer. When
the southern Italian sun is beating down mercilessly, an absorption chiller turns the recovered engine
heat into cooling capacity for air conditioning.
The 'ingegnere' designed this tri-generation system himself, as he reports with some pride. Enplus, the
Italian distributor for MTU Onsite Energy, put it together and configured the CHP module and chiller to
work in harmony with each other, the power grid and the company's heating network.
Costs down by 25 percent
"The MTU Onsite Energy CHP module is the perfect size for us. It is an excellent system. And it is very
quiet. I don't think any of our neighbors have noticed that we have one," grins Gaetano Marino. "Not only
are we complying with the legal requirements, we are supplying ourselves with electricity, heat and
cooling more efficiently and ecologically than before." The bottom line after roughly three years of
operation is that energy costs are down 25% compared with the old system. Electricity and heat from the
public grid are twice as expensive as the energy the factory generates for itself.
The cigar factory uses the electricity from the CHP plant to run equipment such as the tobacco dryers
and the controlled-climate cabinets where the cigars go through the secondary fermentation phase,
mature, and then dry.
No operatic romance
Before that of course, the tobacco has to be made into cigars. The clichéd image of women rolling cigars
at long tables in semi-darkness as depicted in Georges Bizet's opera 'Carmen' is not one found here at
Sigaro Toscano in Cava de’ Tirreni. The only women making cigars are those at the main plant in Lucca
in Tuscany, and they only hand-roll the very best and most expensive varieties. Nor is the plant at Cava
de’ Tirreni a dimly-lit dive, but rather a large, bright room where you mainly find men and machines.
Around two dozen fully automated fabricators with complicated mechanisms have taken over the work of
the women. The tobacco comes out of a large hopper in measured portions, and the individual outer
wrapping is dispensed from a gauze roller (for those in the know: there is no need for an inner wrapper
between the filling and outer wrapper). The men only come into the picture at the end – but no, not for
smoking, for quality control. Antonio Polverino is one of them. He takes the cigars out of the machine
from which they emerge. They are shiny and moist with cigar paste. His trained eyes spot immediately
the ones that would have been better rolled by a skilled female hand, and separates them out as rejects.
The others he spreads out on a wooden frame covered with a thin mesh, strokes them with a practiced
hand, picks the odd one out, inspects and rolls it with a critical eye, and throws it into the rejects bin. Any
that are flawed in any way – too fat, too thin, too tightly or loosely rolled – are thrown out, shredded and
returned to the production loop for a second go.
Weeks of feel-good weather
The cigars are dried and matured at the same time. Foreman Cristoforo Sannino points out that they
may even need as long as 30 days or several months in a drying room, depending on the variety and
flavor. The atmosphere – in other words the air temperature and humidity – in the drying room is
automatically controlled using electricity from the CHP module. The cigars do not leave the room until
they have the prescribed level of residual moisture. And until then they remain the characteristic elliptical
shape – tapered at each end and fatter in the middle – like a zeppelin. Those are the big, long, allevening types. In the past, so legend has it, smokers would cut or break their cigars in half in the middle
– one half for the morning, the other for the afternoon. Today, a large number of cigars are packed off to
the tobacconists already halved – ready to smoke, so to speak. Packed into small boxes of five, they are
sealed in cellophane and sent out to be enjoyed by lovers of Italian smoking specialties.
The three-man cigar
Ingegnere Gaetano Marino reports that the Cava factory makes about 40,000,000 cigars per year. "Our
cigars are luxury consumer goods, people call them lifestyle products these days. You should enjoy
them responsibly." Connoisseurs of these particularly strong cigars are not new to such cautionary
advice. The saying goes that you need three men for one cigar – one man smokes it and the other two
hold him still.
Two long histories
Manufatture Sigaro Toscano can trace its history back to a tobacco manufacturing business founded in
1818 near Florence. Today the company is part of the 135-year-old Maccaferri Group based in Bologna
in northern Italy. Other subsidiaries are involved in industries as diverse as civil engineering products,
biotechnology, machine tools, construction, energy systems and foods. The cigar production arm was
acquired as recently as 2006. The Italian tobacco industry had been run by the state since the 19th
century until 2003, when it was taken over in its entirety by British American Tobacco (BAT), which
subsequently sold the cigar-making division to Maccaferri three years later.
Contact
Daniele di Franco
Tel.: +39 0187 9526-72
Email [email protected]