Thanks for sharing the article... it's always nice to have articles to read from experienced people whether you agree with them or not.
Not sure where the angst is coming from in this thread. I understand people might not like James Suckling, but he has a ton of experience including many trips to Cuba, opportunities to meet industry people and opportunities to smoke most cigars out there. I for one appreciate his opinions and enjoy reading about experiences that I normally cannot do for myself. We need more CC discussion on BOTL, so thanks again for posting.
Regarding your question about the "crappy years", a big part of the bad quality is that Cuba wanted to pump out as many cigars as they could during the cigar boom of the 90's. Making so many cigars created quality control issues where they simply did not care, or have the time to maintain high quality standards. They simply wanted to pump out as many as they could and the quality suffered.
Regarding the current production quality, I have not had any issues but I also have not been smoking that many 12's etc. The current production that I have received have all looked and smelled great, but I don't know how they are smoking. It does surprise me to see Suckling saying that he worries about the current quality.
I do have some personal experience to share... when I visited the El Laguito (Cohiba) factory last November, I asked how they get their employees, as if they get experienced rollers coming over from other factories etc. We were told that they only hire brand new employees and train them the El Laguito way of doing things. New staff are almost always family members of current staff as well. They said the last training session they had was 2 years ago, so there is not much turnover in the most highly regarded factory. So when Suckling says he is worried about seeing so many new rollers etc, there should be no worries about Cohiba/cigars coming out of El Laguito. I do agree that there could be some concern with the other factories having new directors/managers, but there should be enough senior rollers/workers to maintain a level of quality IMO. (edit: I know there are many concerns about the current Behikes coming out now. IMO, this is not quality control issues, but maybe blending/tobacco issues. Is the same amount of medio tempo being used as the OR?)
The thing I worry about, is top HSA managers not giving a shit about the cuban cigar history and that they will chase the hottest trends that NC's are pumping out like 60 ring gauge, limiting the amount of brands thinking they are the only ones that sell etc. To paraphrase someone I met in Cuba that use to work for HSA as a mid-level manager (he quit and won't go back to work for them).... he said HSA is ruining the cuban cigar industry because they don't care about their history and are doing so many cigar/brand deletions among other things. He said that out of roughly 200 HSA managers, only 7 people actually cared about the history/culture and wants to do the right thing, not just chase fads thinking that will make them a buck. One of those 7 just recently quit as well.
