Building Consistency For Millions

SPEAKER_02 0:00

100% of the cigars that go out of our factories, out of Perdomo cigars, is draw tests. If you peel off every wrapper when you're done smoking the cigar, you're gonna see a line. It could be orange, blue, green. Of course, because we have 18 operators and every operator has their own color. And if we ever had a complaint on a draw, we could take that cigar and ask, what color was the pen? And if it was green, we know it's Jose.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Welcome to the world of Perdomo Cigars. We deliver the most authentic in-depth cigar education to you, the cigar enthusiast. Recorded at the Perdomo Studio in Miami, Florida, brought to you by third and fourth generation Master Cigar Makers. This is the Perdomo Podcast. Your hosts, Nick and Nicholas Perdomo.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Welcome to the Perdomo Podcast. I'm Nicholas Perdomo with Perdomo Cigars. I'm alongside my dad, Nick Perdomo. Dad, how are you? I'm doing great. How are you doing? Excellent. Today we have truly a gem. Today is something I find that's very important because I think we're going to talk about and show everybody in Nicaragua just truly how incredible we are. And I say it out of pride, I say it out of confidence, in terms of I'm so just I'm so on fire for our brand and what we do. And you guys are going to see how special in terms of today's subject, which is how to make millions millions of cigars and control the quality. And control is really the key. And that's really one of the biggest questions is how do you make millions of cigars? They've asked my dad, they've asked many of you guys have asked my dad, myself, how do you make millions of premium cigars and keep the quality super consistent? And today we're going to show you that. And the answer definitely isn't by luck, but it's controlling the quality at every single step. And I think that's paramount. That and it's everything. It really is.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

It's 100% so difficult. Imagine when I started out of my garage, I sold 9,450 cigars in three months. Any company that makes an output of over 10 million cigars and has consistency is a great company. And there's a lot of respect from our family to these companies, and vice versa. I know that to be true. But the mindset when I started, and even to this day where we make hundreds of thousands of cigars a week is still the same. Perfection is the gold excellence is merely tolerated. So what you do is when you when you have five sets of rollers, it's easy, pretty much, because you can be right on top of it. When you have hundreds and hundreds of rollers, which you guys will see when we go to Nicaragua together, it's tough. Yes. Field supervisor after field supervisor checking tables nonstop, nobody sits down. It's a an incredible amount of work in progress. And but it runs like a like a great watch. Yes. And I'm really proud of it. But it it took a lot of work to do that because as you add people, you have to add supervisors, and you have to add the right people. There's an old Cuban saying that says, sometimes in a chicken coop, more chickens don't necessarily mean more eggs. It could mean more chicken shit. So you have to make sure that you do things right. And we have such an incredible team, and I bring it up, I'm so proud of my team in Nicaragua. You can imagine the average worker's been with the company for 22.3 years, and that's where you build consistency, where guys are happy where they're at. We run our company like a family. And I think it's very important. And everybody has the mindset. My father really built a great culture there in the beginning, showing how important the consumers were and the retailers were. And that's why we always brought retailers and consumers to our factory for the last 24 years. I wanted them to be able to see how important their work was because most factories, consumers never come in. Very few times a year, a retailer will come in and so on. But I wanted them to see those people so they could have a conscience and a feeling and a love and a passion like we have the same to be able to see how important their body of work is.

The Cigar We’re Smoking Today

SPEAKER_01 4:00

Dad, before we go into this, what are you smoking today?

SPEAKER_02 4:04

I am smoking one of my favorite cigars, which I get not to smoke much of, and it's the Perdomo 12-year double-aged vintage, where all the fillers, binders, and wrappers are certified by me that the fillers, binders, and wrappers have been aged for 10 years and then get an additional two years of barrel aging, and that's every filler binder and wrapper. And that started with my love of single malt scotch, and it's one of the greatest cigars around, in my personal opinion.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Yeah, and smoking now the Perdomo 12-year double-aged vintage Maduro. And this is absolutely just a chocolate bar.

SPEAKER_02 4:38

That's the right, that's the right description, I say. It is like a chocolate bar. It's a great cigar. If you guys haven't tried it, give it a shot. I think you're gonna love it.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Yeah, monster flavors, just super sweet, super smooth. But you know, going back to how we truly make millions of cigars and maintain quality. Today you guys are gonna see how every cigar is made, tested, inspected, and approved by our top people before it even reaches the aging room. And then today we're gonna talk about we're gonna show you guys how we bunch our cigars, how we make the binders, how we bunch the cigars and pass the binder over top, then how we pass the wrapper. Then we're gonna show you prior to how we pass the wrapper, how every single cigar is draw tested. 100% of the cigars that go out of our factories, out of Perdomo cigars, is draw tested. And we're gonna show you that today.

SPEAKER_02 5:23

Not to cut you off, but talking about the draw test. There's been if you peel off every wrapper when you're done smoking the cigar, you're gonna see a line. It could be orange, blue, green. There's all different types of colors because we have 18 operators, and every operator has their own color. It's a water-based pen that's flavorless and odaless. And the reason we mark it up on the top is because one, you're never gonna taste it, and two, you're never gonna smoke the cigar up to here. That is one of the 18 quality control checkpoints that we use. And what that does is that guarantees that every cigar has been draw tested. And if we ever had a complaint on a draw, we could take that cigar and ask, what color was the pen? And if it was green, we know it's Jose. Whoever it is, we would know who it is. We're that resolute of making sure the quality's perfect. And I'm a big believer that if you're going to draw test cigars, draw test every single one of them. And what that does is it causes discipline, and people are really more focused in the way they work because their work is being checked consistently. And look, we have a thing in our factory, and there's these four black metal doors that you see that go out into the packaging room, and it says no cigar will be left unless it's perfect because our consumers and our retailers deserve that. And that's the mindset we have at Perdomo, and I'm very proud of that.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Well, now that leads me into what we're gonna talk about and what we're gonna show you. We're momentarily about to go into Nicaragua, but as you guys, as we go back to Nicaragua together, just think of the standard. And my dad created a standard and put the standard amongst our people, amongst our family, everybody. And so you guys are gonna really witness and see the standard of just how a cigar is made. You guys have seen countless times over and over again how cigars are made, passing the wrapper, creating the bunch, and so forth. But we're gonna show you these steps that truly are defining steps of Podomo cigars, but that separate us from everybody else. So, Dad, it's time to go back to Nicaragua. We'll see you guys in Nicaragua.

Nicaragua Rolling Floor And Bunching

SPEAKER_01 7:45

We're here in our production facility here at Tabacalera Perdomo. And so, today what we wanted to show you was is how you get the optimum flavors when constructing a cigar. And so today we have something very special. We're here in Nicaragua and we're we're doing our Perdomo Legacy father and son. So, this is a pair of rollers that we have here. We're doing it right now. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna start with the bunching, and then we're also gonna talk about passing the wrapper. So, Dad, if you could, if you could explain to our viewers about how we properly construct a blend, starting with bunching.

SPEAKER_02 8:16

Well, first of all, one of the things I'm most proud of is our workforce has been averaging over 22 years with the company. Eddie and his wife have been here both for 30 years. Imagine us and the wife team working 30 years together. I don't know if I could do that. But father and son, this is our newest one, the uh Gran Figueroa. Yep. And it's an incredible cigar. And basically, you have the buncher and you have the roller. And what he's doing is he's making the blend, and basically all the fillers are in a clockwise position. So basically, your binders are on your left, which we'll show you in a little bit, your light fillers, your heavy fillers, your heavier fillers than your ligeros. And what he's doing is he's making the blend and bunching the cigar. And what she's doing is she's rolling the cigar. So the first thing he's doing is we have a method we call entubing. We make little funnels. And the reason we do is we want the cigar to burn in a 360-degree access. And the reason we want to do that is instead of the cigar burning straight through, we want it to burn cool. If it burns cool, you're gonna be able to taste most of those flavors. You see how stringent we are with all our quality development and control from growing to curing the fermenting to aging to tobaccos. If you don't construct a cigar perfectly, what are we doing, right? We're basically breaking the chain. So, what he's doing is he's actually bunching the cigar, he'll put it in the press mold, he'll put the press mold in for 20 minutes, one single turn, and then he'll go to draw testing, which we'll show you here momentarily. And after the cigars are draw tested, he'll give it a quarter turn and then he'll put the press mold back down. You ever see a cigar sometimes has a fine line across it? That's because it wasn't properly bunched, where you make the turn two times, so the barrel is nice and smooth. This cigar happens to be box pressed, but after that, prior to box pressing, she's gonna roll the cigar, and what she's gonna do here is she's gonna stretch that wrapper, and then she's gonna take her Chevetta, which is a blade, and she's gonna cut it and cut all the heavy excess pieces of the vein. Then she's gonna smash that vein because the wrappers are so thick, put a little bit of pectin, it's a fruit pectin, pass it through the ring gauge meter, and then she's gonna start the head because it's a perfecto. It's a very tough shape to make. She's gonna stretch and roll, and then there's a little vein there. I like them to pull it out with their fingernails so when you put it in your mouth, it's a nice smooth feeling. And then she's gonna wrap that all the way around. And then she's gonna cut it, she's gonna take a little bit of the pectin, she's gonna wrap it around so it's nice and flat. So when you cut it, it's nice and even. She's gonna take the same piece of wrapper, go in between, and make a little half moon almost, where she's going to come around and wrap the foot because she's got not only to wrap the head, but also to wrap the foot because it's a perfecto shape. After she wraps it around, she's gonna take it in the tuck cutter, cut it, then she's gonna take the cap and make a cap from the same piece of wrapper from the excess and tap it on, and voila, there's the grand figurado. So we only have six set of rollers that make this particular cigar because it's a very difficult cigar to make, and we're really proud of it. And I hope you guys get to enjoy seeing our team working and making the legacy father and son, which will be out in the very near future.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Yep. So we're very grateful, and you know, we're excited for this brand to be launching, and so we're excited to show you guys this specific item here today in a specific size. So, now what we're gonna do is we're gonna move over to quality control, and we're gonna show you guys prior to passing the wrapper tobaccos, how we properly test the cigars in terms of the bunch to make sure that they perfectly draw. So we're gonna go over this way. Okay. Here at

Draw Testing 100% Of Cigars

SPEAKER_01 11:55

our draw testing stations, we have about 18 draw testing stations here. And so, really, this is one of the rooms that truly defines us here at Podomo Cigars. We draw tests, not 50%, not 60%, not 70%, but we draw test 100% of all our cigars that come out of our factory. And this is truly one of the things that makes us most well known for our quality in terms of our consistency. So, Dad, one of the things I want to talk about, and what we'd I'd like to do is show our audience exactly how we draw test cigars and really how you came up with this system.

SPEAKER_02 12:28

Well, we actually have a system where we actually have rollers that we hire to draw test all the cigars because they know everything about cigars. And the second thing, we even have guys that bring dollies around with the sections of the rollers to draw test after they make their first 10 sets of bunches. And the reason we do that is so they continue working so we don't impede their work. And also instead of them getting up and bringing the molds, we actually actually have somebody bring the molds for them. So, like Nickel said earlier, 18 draw testing machines, we can draw test up to 18 cigars a section, 18 cigars a second is what we can do. And my big thing is every cigar should draw. If you buy a box of cigars, they everyone should draw. And we're really resolute about making sure that all the cigars draw test. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna show you how one of the operators works so you could see it. This works on a principle of draw pressure. So basically, what he's gonna do is he's going to check with this jig exactly what the pounds per square centimeter is for the draw testing. So he checks and he basically has a variance. So he can go from 37 to 44. So he's gonna go over here to 40, it's perfect. He's gonna go back up, 36, perfect. Well, we don't want the cigar to be is a draw too easy or too hard. It should be perfect. 39 in the range, absolutely perfect. 36, perfect. And he's gonna go, and what he does is every cigar he does, he's gonna pass it through the ring gauge meter to make sure the cigars are perfect in their dimension. You pay for a 54, you should get a 54, and he's gonna draw test them. He has a pedal on his foot, and basically it works on a drop pressure principle. It almost has like uh a weight that you would have in a fishing when you when you drop a fishing line in the fish, and that system pulls that weight up and it tells you the exact amount of draw. And what we do is we take every cigar we've ever made from 28 to 70, and we take a tug cutter, we cut the cigar, and we draw, and we'd say, This is the perfect draw, and then we put it in the machine. After he's done and drawing the cigars, he'll take an alcohol-based pen. And that alcohol-based pen, he'll actually wrap it and put it across the head. A lot of people have taken our wrappers off and always say, Why is there a mark on the head? That is the guarantee that the cigar draws. So that's what he's doing right now. And if you look around, you'll see that everybody is draw testing a cigar. If a cigar doesn't draw, what we do is we have them, we bring the operator back or the or the buncher back, and we explain to him what he did wrong. We also give him another opportunity to remake the cigar again, which incentivizes him, but it also teaches him. Because you know, Nichols, this is a teaching tool here. It's not a punishment tool, but we want our customers to have every cigar draw test. And you can see how he marks every single one. So when you look, you'll see that every single cigar is draw tested. So what happens is when it goes back to the buncher and he makes that quarter turn, like I explained earlier, the cigar is going to have a beautiful even barrel. The cigar is going to be draw tested, thank you. And then what's going to happen is the roller will pass the wrapper, and that's how we guarantee every cigar draw.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

So that's a little bit of behind the scenes of our draw testing stations. And so we were glad to show you this. So I appreciate it. Welcome everybody.

Checkpoint 17 Before The Aging Room

SPEAKER_01 15:52

We're here in our quality control room. This is really one of our second to last. This is our 17th of our 18-point checkpoints here, where we review the cigars before they go into a box. And so this is really one of the holy grail type of rooms, and this is our most trusted people. For example, here to my left, we have in the middle between my dad and I, a gentleman by the name of Marla, who's been with us for 22 years, and he goes through every each and every single cigar. As you can tell, this is one of a few cigars, but he goes through tens of thousands of cigars a day. And so today, what we're doing is we're gonna look at, we're gonna actually go through what he does on a daily basis. I'm gonna allow my dad to explain exactly what he's doing right now with the 17 checkpoint at the 18 checkpoint. So, dad, if you could tell our viewers.

SPEAKER_02 16:34

So basically, we have a team that supervises a check, the bunchers and the rollers, and each one work a line. And every day they work a different line. And the reason we do that is so they don't get adapted to meeting the same rollers over and over again. But every line we have only makes one size of a cigar. So one line will be Churchill's, one line will be Robusto's and epicures, and so on. The reason we do that is so we don't have a bunch of different sizes, and each supervisor checks one size, and he'll be more proficient at it during the day while he's checking. After each one checks the buncher and the roller, it would be like me and Nicholas. I would check the buncher, he would check the roller. After we go through everything, we sign our initials on the half-wheel, which is 50 cigars. We put our initials on, then a next set of supervisors toward the end of the afternoon will come and recheck. One of the greatest presidents in the world always said trust but verify. And we're big believers at it in Perdoma, trust but verify. But we also have a circle of trust. And we have 13 people that work here, and right now 12 of them are out on the floor because they're rechecking after they've been to this room to give wheels back or any cigars back that they didn't find were perfect, so they could be redone or whatever. It could have been a fleck on a wrap, or it could be a minimal thing. A lot of times, when we're checking the cigars, we could put a fleck in it and we give it back to the rollers so they can redo it of any, it could be the most minuscule mistake, but we want to make sure. So we really have six sets of people that go over to recheck the cigars. So what Marlon's doing right now is he's hand checking every cigar after they've already been checked six times prior to the bunch being checked, and I could go on and on and on. And he's making sure that the cigars have the adequate amount of turns that this needs. This is an epicure, so it needs three and a half turns. He's making sure that the head of the cigar is perfect and perfectly round. You'll see him hand checking the cigars. He's looking at the foot. I can't explain this to you in a quick amount of time, but he's making sure that the Lihedo, the strength tobacco, is right in the middle. The visos and the secos are on the outside between the binder and the wrapper. And the reason we're doing that is so the cigar burns perfectly. And then he's going to pass it through a ring gauge meter. And when he checks all the cigars, he'll put them and re-tie them, and then he'll sign off. And basically, he puts his hand on the fire saying, these cigars are perfect before they go into the aging room. And this is the 17 check. We check the cigars 18 times, but we do that in packaging before they get boxed to finally have all the cigars absolutely perfect. We actually take each cigar out of the box and recheck them. But we'll show you that in the near future in another podcast. But this is something we find really important. My dad always said, and I say this all the time, it takes 10 years to get a customer, it takes three seconds to lose one. I explain it to everybody in the company and to my son also. And our thing is that we want perfection. You know, our our big mantra in the factory is perfection's the golden. Excellence is merely tolerated. We're big believers of that. If you look behind us, these are all the exact weight standards that each cigar has to have. We only give them plus or minus two ounces. So if you look here, I look at two rollers that are doing the same cigars. If you look here, you'll notice that these two cigars here tell you the date that the cigar was made, the weight, the names of the rollers, the blend, and all the checkoff lists, and the final supervisor signs off of what I want you to really see is that this cigar is supposed to weigh exactly 36 ounces, 36 and 36. That's the reason I don't like to change guys from sizes, because once they have perfection in their hands, why change it? And what we do is to incentivize them, we give them pay increment bonuses every year if they hit the A scale. And if a guy has is proficient in the size he makes, and I know Nicholas is a big believer in this, why change sizes for him? If he's proficient, let him make the size he wants. So in our factory, it's kind of different. Torpedoes, of course, make the most money. Grand Figurados, Gram Bellicosos, all the shaped cigars are really hard to make. But we have Corona rollers who've been with us for 30 years, who do phenomenal coronas, and we step them up and they make all the same scale as a torpedo roller. And when a torpedo roller works for so many years and keeps going, we give them step increases. And that's the reason that we incentivize our workers, we give them a good, great living wage, and they've been with us on average for 22 years. And I just wanted to show you this because I think this is extremely important to see how we go over these cigars over and over again to give you the best cigars that God will allow us to have.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Well, Dad, I think one of the things, and I think our viewers are probably thinking this, we're pretty paranoid type of people. And I would have to say, yeah, we are, because at the end of the day, all our cigars have our last name on them. So you guys deserve nothing but the best in terms of quality. And you know, and it's one of those things that we're never we're never going to be content. We're grateful for everything, but we're always gonna have our operations and our standards to make sure that we deliver everybody the best cigars possible that our family can make. So this is one of the one of the major major places in our facility here today. So thanks for joining us.

Back In Miami Why Standards Matter

SPEAKER_01 21:47

Welcome back to Miami Lakes, Florida, here at Perdomo Cigars, and specifically the Perdomo Podcast Studio. Dad, that was a lot of fun. I loved it. That's fantastic. But you can see, and I I think you know, we've talked About before, if you really thought we were paranoid in terms of how we age or tobacco, in terms of how we, you know, do everything, imagine how we make cigars. You guys saw it firsthand. So again, going back, every cigar has our last name on it, every band that you guys smoke. One thing's for sure, and I think I've heard it from different people who have restaurants. And the truth is you can eat at the greatest restaurant, you could be a regular customer, but the truth of the matter is everybody remembers the last meal they ate. And you could have 500 great meals at a restaurant, but if you had that one bad meal, that's the last meal you remember. And most most of the time you ain't going back. And so that's that's something that again, standard mindset, that's something that we have.

SPEAKER_02 22:44

Absolutely, we have that. And the consumer deserves the very best, regardless of what blend they preferably like. So we're very resolute on that. And I think about that every night before my head hits the pillow, that's for a fact.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

And Dad, you know, we look, you know, we go through the bunching method, and something that we really not necessarily have talked about a lot, but there's different styles. One of the best things that we do, and we're one of very few companies, whether it be in the country of Nicaragua, whether it be the country of Dominican Republic or even Honduras, we have the best we have the best method in terms of how we create a bunch. It's called the entubado method, which is the entubing method. And so, Dad, if you can that's really the foundation of the cigar. So, you know, we showed you guys our draw testing rooms, we showed you how the cigars are bunched. We should we then the passing of the wrapper over top of the bunch, which is where which is the binder that holds the filler, and then going into our quality control room and spending time with Marlin, who's been with us for two plus decades and going through everything and just the final inspection or the 17th, uh the second to last inspection, which is 17th of 18 checkpoints that we have in our facility.

Entubado Burn, Veins, And One Binder

SPEAKER_01 23:53

Talk a little bit about why we entube our cigars instead of doing the other methods.

SPEAKER_02 23:57

Yeah, before I go in there, you you brought up something that just sparked my mind. When I had three rollers in a garage, I had one guy check those three rollers. I think today we do numerous more checks with over five hundred rollers than we did with the three. And that's what the consistency is too. Not only having great workers and great great rollers, but also having so many checks and balance. I didn't check my cigars 18 times when I first started. And the entubing method is basically making little funnels out of the cigars. It's more time consuming. I hear a lot of people say they do it, but I go to factory and factory, and everybody does what it not all factories, but most factories do this accordion method. A lot of people think that's good. The reason I don't think it's good is because when you accordion the tobacco, the tobacco burns much faster and accelerated rate. It burns straight. When you have the entubing method, which are little tubes, fine tubes all around, a lot of times you'll see, you'll see little circles. A lot of times you guys think that's a bad thing. That's actually a good thing because what happens is we want that burn, we want that cigar to burn in a circle. As it burns in a circle coming across, it actually burns slower. As it burns slower and combusts, it's going to be cooler. Now, is it more time consuming? Yes, but it's the way I learned it was the way they did it in Cuba when Cuba made great cigars in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. And it's the right way to make cigars and we're wrestled about it. We also don't like to mount two binders on it on a cigar. We like to use one binder. If you have two binders and it sits on top, you're going to have a passage problem because they're mounted. And once they're mounted, the cigar is going to burn unevenly. So it's paramount, and we're known for our construction, and it's because of the entubing method. And if you look, you'll see little circles around there. That's that's normal, guys. That's not a bad thing. And if you see a little vein or a strip, that's part of the leaf. That's not a bad thing. Now, if you see a vein the size of my finger, that's supposed to be stripped out. You strip out 50% of the filler to make the cigar. But if you didn't have that main vein in the middle, your ash would continuously fall off almost like a cigarette. And also it imparts a lot of flavor. That's your nutrigen, pipe, nitrogen, your potassium, and your phosphorus conduit to the leaf that provides flavor. It's no different than protein, you know, vitamins and minerals. And we're starting to see people going, oh, I see a vein here, I see a vein there. Everybody's becoming an expert. You want those veins, you won't have consistent construction without those veins. Not a vein the size of my finger, but if you have little veins and stuff, that's normal. That's part of the leaf structure. It keeps the ash together. It keeps the ash together. It also imparts a lot of flavor because it is the conduit of all the nutrients that the tobacco has. So I wanted to set that, set that straight.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Yeah, dad, absolutely. And I think going through everything and looking at what we've just gone through in terms of how we go through the cigar after we take the tobaccos, we've already talked about blending, but now we've taken our blends. Now we're going into production, producing millions of cigars, maintaining quality. But I think the answer is very simple. Every cigar earns its place, right? I think every cigar earns its place through the quality checkpoints before it even gets goes into a box. But the truth of the matter is quality isn't just one department or a QC or quality control. It's not just one department, it's every step. And every step from the time that we take that tobacco and we harvest the tobacco, we prime the leaves, goes into the curing barn, everything's done through quality. So when we talk about 18 quality point checks, it's the truth. And when you guys, and I hope that a lot of you guys will be visiting us in 2027 in January and February to go on our Prodomo Factory tours so that you can witness and see these 18 checkpoints. But when you see it, you'll be flabbergasted. I think you guys will be so proud, not only of just being a prodomo smoker, but I think that you'll personally feel this connection, which I think you a lot most of you have already had with us. And it's one of the things that my dad and I are so grateful for, especially with your comments and support. And that's why we keep doing this. We do it for you guys, and thank you for giving us the encouragement to do it. But quality is everything, it's paramount. And so today you just saw how you make millions or how we make millions of cigars and how we keep quality first and foremost and how we keep it consistent. So I think this today was a great episode.

SPEAKER_02 28:16

It is. I want to bring up one more thing. When you saw the buncher make, you saw this little square thing, it's called a lever machine. Every fantastic cigar company uses it. In the old days, when we would roll the cigar before we'd put the wrapper, we turn it. Well, your wrist doesn't turn in a 360-degree axle at the same time. It turns differently. What happens is it's almost like wringing out a towel. When you do it by hand, sometimes you'll twist the bunch, we call it. And that'll hurt the way the cigar burns and also hurt the draw. And you want a very straight bunch. So what happens is you put that in the canal, when you run that up, it's all done by hand. It's all been bunched, but it has a steel bar, and that steel bar makes sure that when it goes up, it continues making it straight. So that's a great thing. There's technology now, all the great factories use it. They've been using it for the last 55 years for the most part. And it guarantees and helps the cigar burn much more perfect, cooler, straighter, and it's an attribute for the cigars. So you're still making it by hand. Some people see that and go, Oh, you're you're cheating. No, you're not cheating. You actually made the bunch, you put it in the canal, and as you're rolling it, you're pulling up to make sure the bar keeps the bunch straight. That's a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

Yeah. So basically, you're not doing this, and my right hand goes over top, and I now I I crinkle, you know, I I don't allow airflow to go through. So that's that's definitely the truth, Dad. But yeah, quality's first and foremost for everything, and we're never going to compromise quality. We're always going to use technology whenever we can, and we're going to use things that make us better. There's some technology, like you said in previous episodes, we're never going to use because it could be too complicated. And there's great methods that our ancestors have created that we'll continue to use for many, many generations that I'll teach my children. But today was a really great episode, and now you guys

Closing Requests And Thanks

SPEAKER_01 30:05

have the answer. But please like, share, and subscribe to our Podomo YouTube pages, also our Podomo Facebook, Instagram pages. Leave us some comments. We'd love to hear from you guys. Thank you for giving us the motivation to continue to do this. We we are very, very grateful for your support, and we'll continue doing this. But thank you guys so much, and we'll see you very soon. See ya.