At the turn of the twentieth century, Tampa’s Ybor City was considered the Cigar Capital of the World, with some two hundred factories rolling more than a million cigars a day. Today a single factory still produces them in Ybor City: J.C. Newman Cigar Co. The fourth-generation owner, Drew Newman, says his great-grandfather and grandfather moved the family business from Cleveland, where they started in 1895, to Ybor City in 1954. The company is celebrating seventy years in El Reloj, its historic clock tower factory, this year. Not ones to rest on their tobacco leaves, Newman and his team are enhancing the visitor experience—renovations are underway to transform a neighboring building into a restaurant, cigar club, and eleven-room inn. They’re also relocating an antique tobacco barn from North Florida to the corner across from El Reloj, where a small urban tobacco field will share details of the process with visitors, from growing seedlings to harvesting, fermenting, and drying leaves before the pros roll them into smokes. As Luis Gonzalez, a torcedor, or cigar roller, puts it: “We are part of the history keeping this beautiful tradition alive.”
Southern Agenda