Puros?

[kansashat]

Originally Posted by csbrewfisher

I had an good interesting with the rep for Arganese the other day. He asked me to take my pick of four blends that he had on hand. We talked a bit about each of them. I then asked if any of them were puros. I was really surprised by his answer, because I was under the impression that a puro was a cigar made of tobacco that was entirely grown in a single country.

This gentleman told me that puros were cigars made completely of tobacco NATIVE to a country.

Is that your understanding? If true, then you would have to agree that very few cigars are puros, wouldn't you?

You know it ocurrs to me that, if we were to accept his definition of a puro, you'd just about have to be an agra archaeologist to figure out where tobacco was 1st native to, where it was 1st cultivated, & where cigars were produced...the rest are just posers. I think perhaps Columbus in Cuba was the western world's 1st exposure to cigars.

I've heard of cigars made with Connecticut tobacco exclusively. I suppose those would be puros if the tobacco seed is native to the US. Perhaps like most Americans, cultivated tobacco in the United States elbowed some native flora off of it's particular patch of dirt.

What about Brazilian Mata Fina? I've smoked what I thought were puros made with entirely Brazilian tobacco only now to be faced with the angst created by the little seed of doubt sown in my brain that the seeds perhaps weren't originally native to Brazil.

Who is this guy? What right does he have to create such discord in the cigar world? I say we make him prove his theories, research it, shoot a documentary with Geraldo, or hunt him down & shoot him down like the mangy cur I suspect him to be.

[The Postman]

And I say you are right!! What kind of gentlemen would go about sowing such discord?? How dare he!! What is he, some kind of Liberal?? Does that mean I am not a Puro because my mom was born in Manitoba, and my father was born in Saskatchewan??? What is this world coming to???

[tzaddi]

The term "Native", IMHO, can be relative when adding the element of time to the equation. Looking back in time through thousands of generations one might observe the "naturalization" of the plant to a certain region as it's seed migrated by wind, water, animal or human, finding a suitable habitat where it could thrive.

Most certainly the history of tobacco predates the current lines on a map that define countries within a continent or region as we now know them.

Perhaps the term indigenous, from Latin indigena ‘a native’ can come into play as well.

Plant geneticists have established that tobacco's centre of origin, i.e. the meeting place between a species' genetic origin and the area in which it was first cultivated, is located in the area currently called the Peruvian/Ecuadorean Andes. Estimates for its first date of cultivation range from 5000-3000 BC. Tobacco use then spread northwards and by the time of Cristobal Colon's (Christopher Columbus) arrival in 1492 it had reached every corner of the "American" continent, including the offshore islands such as Cuba.

I will go with the Wiki definition.

[scottw]

Originally Posted by NCRadioMan

I guess the rep and I will have to agreee to disagree.

I agree.