The third day of Procigar 2016 kicked off with a hoodied Charlie Minato and myself on a bus to visit the Cigar Family Charitable Foundation (CFCF) with a small group of attendees—the bulk of whom worked in the cigar industry in one capacity or another. It’s about an hour’s drive from the hotel in Santiago to the foundation’s location in Bonao, a journey that takes one from the congestion of a decently-sized city east into a fairly small community called Caribe. More importantly, it’s a chance to see beyond a farm or factory, and to actually see just what sort of good the cigar industry can do for a community. I’d like to think that most cigar smokers are at least aware of CFCF, which was launched by the Arturo Fuente and J.C. Newman companies in 2004. If you’ve been fortunate to have a conversation with Carlos “Carlito” Fuente Jr., Bobby Newman or Eric Newman, I’d venture to guess it came up at some point. You may have seen the two-packs of cigars that appear in retail humidors during the fall and winter and bear the foundation’s logo. But if you don’t know exactly what the foundation is about, allow me ...
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