這是Cigar Aficionado雜志社的編輯Gregory Mottola參加尼加拉瓜雪茄節的一篇日記。

眼下是煙葉耕種季節的季中，我站在煙葉田里，我的靴子上有一層來自煙葉田的灰塵。無論你往什么方向看去，遠處都是連接著地平線的山脈。你深呼吸一下，感受這里干凈的空氣，可能會想到陽光明媚的納帕。在這里，你不需要鬧鐘，因為公雞會喊醒你。即使在最簡陋的咖啡小屋里，有著那種煤渣墻和生銹的波紋屋頂，咖啡仍然很好喝。這就是尼加拉瓜的埃斯特利，我又回來了。

我好久沒有來埃斯特利了。我很驚訝這個城市現在變得如此繁忙，泛美公路沿線有很多煙葉田，煙草植株開始發芽了。我來這里是參加尼加拉瓜的Puro Sabor雪茄節。過去兩年由于新冠病毒疫情停止了兩年。這是第十屆雪茄節，和其他雪茄節安排的內容大致相同。白天去雪茄廠和煙葉田實地參觀，晚上舉辦聚會，期間可以領足夠多的免費雪茄。我有時候會不按照時間表參觀，就像昨天（1月26日），當時我在A.J.費爾南德斯雪茄廠參觀。

評估煙葉質量的最好辦法就是抽原葉。也就是打開一些正在發酵的煙葉包，拿出一些煙葉卷起來，盡可能的點燃后抽吸。費爾南德斯有一些非常美味的發酵煙葉包，他想卷給我試試。他有一款茄衣煙葉，計劃在未來的限量版項目里使用，他從其他的煙葉包里各抽出一些不同的煙葉，卷成一支真正的雪茄。他說這個煙葉混合和他正在研究的一款混合物的比例十分近似。

我抽的這款臨時卷制的雪茄十分辛辣，力度很強。我承認，我有點頭暈，雖然我吃了一頓很好的早餐。如果你有機會抽一款這樣臨時卷制的雪茄，你最好要吃飽了飯，才能扛得住。

昨天，雪茄節的派對安排在了STG雪茄廠，這里以生產CAO雪茄而聞名。雪茄節是在格拉納達（Granada）開幕的，第一個晚上的活動安排在埃斯特利，大多數尼加拉瓜雪茄品牌都是在這個城市生產的。卡諾之花尼加拉瓜朗姆酒是主要贊助商，你幾乎在會場的任何角落都可以看見這個品牌。朗姆酒讓人精神飽滿，服務生將一個長勺子浸入朗姆酒桶，盛出幾盎司朗姆酒，高高舉起，倒入玻璃杯中。

很多行業人士出席了晚上的派對。J.C紐曼公司的埃里克·紐曼（Eric Newman），尼加拉瓜喬亞雪茄（Joya de Nicaragua）公司的亞歷杭德羅·馬丁內斯·昆卡（Alejandro Martínez-Cuenca）博士和他的兒子胡安，喬亞雪茄公司是從桑迪諾戰爭中幸存下來的一家老公司。

因為埃斯特利的酒店不多，所以尼加拉瓜雪茄節邀請的嘉賓和客人不會太多。晚上的派對演出沒有其他雪茄節規模大。如果你不喜歡通宵跳舞，有一班早班車可以送你回酒店，你可以早點上床休息，準備第二天的旅行。宿醉之后去旅游肯定沒有那么好。

There’s a dusty patina on my boots from the tobacco fields, which are only now approaching mid-season on account of a late start. Mountains are on the horizon everywhere you look, but you’d probably figure that anyway just by taking a deep breath of the clean air. It might remind you of Napa on the sunnier days. You don’t need an alarm clock, as the roosters take care of that. And even in the most modest of coffee shacks—with their cinderblock walls and rusty, corrugated roofs—the coffee is still good. This is Estelí, Nicaragua, and it’s good to be back.?

It’s been awhile since I’ve set foot in this part of the world, and I’m amazed at how busy the city has become and how many tobacco fields have sprouted along the Pan-American Highway. I’m here for Puro Sabor, Nicaragua’s cigar festival, the first one after a two-year hiatus thanks to the pandemic. This is the tenth festival, and like other cigar festivals, it’s arranged in much the same way: factory tours and field trips during the day, a party by night and more cigars than you can carry the entire time. There’s an itinerary to it all, but sometimes I go off script, like yesterday, when I visited A.J. Fernandez at his factory.

One of the best ways to assess tobacco is to smoke it in fuma. That means you unpack a bale of aged tobacco, roll some up, light it the best you can and smoke it. A.J. has some really tasty wrapper hybrids that he wanted me to try, so he pulled them out of inventory. The wrapper is being set aside for a limited-edition project he has planned for the future. First, we smoked the tobacco on its own—sweet, spicy and quite strong. Then, he retrieved some different tobacco out of separate bales and rolled an actual cigar. This was an approximation of a blend he’s working on and it was surprisingly refined.?

You have to be careful when smoking fumas though. The tobacco can still be unexpectedly strong and it’s easy to lose track of how much you’re sampling. I admit, these made me a little dizzy, even though I had a good breakfast of eggs, plantains, beans and cubed cheese, referred to as a desayuno norte?o or northerner breakfast. If you ever have the opportunity to smoke a fuma out of a bale, be sure you’re hydrated and fully fed. We headed out to his farms afterward (there’ll be a larger article on that later).

Last night, there was a welcome party for the festival held on the grounds of STG Estelí, the factory known for making CAO cigars. Puro Sabor started in Granada, but this was the first evening in Estelí (where most Nicaraguan cigars are rolled) and Flor de Ca?a Nicaraguan rum was a major sponsor. The branding was hard to miss, illuminated in big letters nearly everywhere you looked. The rum bar kept things spirited, especially the cask pourer, who brought some theater by dipping a long ladle into a rum barrel, extracting a few ounces of rum and holding it high as he poured it into a glass.?

It should be of no surprise that many people from the cigar industry were in attendance, everyone from Eric Newman of J.C Newman Cigar Co. to Dr. Alejandro Martínez-Cuenca and his son, Juan, both of Joya de Nicaragua, the battle-scarred operation that survived the Sandinista wars. That’s always been the beauty of these festivals. If you don’t get to meet the cigarmakers on one of their factory or field tours, you can often see them at one of the evening parties, which don’t get too crowded. Because the city of Estelí is very limited in hotel capacity, Puro Sabor can only invite so many guests. The show isn’t as large as the others, but it sells out fast. As for the parties, if dancing all night isn’t your thing, there’s an early bus to take you back to your hotel where you can turn in early and rest up for the next morning’s tour. It’s better for a good night’s sleep, and it’s certainly no fun going on a tour with a hangover. Then again, if you duck out early, you never know what you might miss.