Slowly but surely I approach the heart of the manufactory - the „Galera“, where the cigars are rolled. But before that, there was an important production stage to get a taste of: binder and wrapper sorting.
Here I had to pay attention to three things:
1. quality
2. colour
3. size
All three criteria are very, very strict in the Davidoff manufactory, the control system is extremely tight and I slowly realize why - when you open a Davidoff cigar box - all cigars in a box are perfectly in the same colour.
During the binder sorting process, leaves that are too small or do not meet the quality criteria are rejected again; they are downgraded to filler tobacco. The same process applies to the wrapper: sorted out leaves can be used as binders.
First I was allowed to sort Habano wrappers, which are used e.g. for the Davidoff Millennium line.
Habano refers to the name of the seed, which gives birth to a wrapper grown in Ecuador (in this case). It is not grown in Cuba.
Here we differentiate between the colour levels "claro" and "rojizo".
One thing was very helpful: two cigars with different coloured wrappers (one claro and one rojizo)lay on my table and I could compare again and again.
Then I sorted Connecticut wrappers - these wrappers are incredibly thin and fine. They serve as "dress" e.g. for Davidoff No.2, 2000 or for the Aniversario line.
At the end both binder and wrapper are bundled: Binders of 50 each and wrappers of 25 each.
It was a bit like counting sheep and again I admired the stamina of my colleagues, who do this work every day…and they do it with care and respect for the leaves…