Real Fábrica de Tabaco Partagas

This guide to the Real Fábrica de Tabaco Partagas in Havana centers on a tradition founder Jaime Partagas brought into the factory in eighteen sixty-six: a reader mounted on a raised wooden stand called the tribuna, performing newspapers and novels for rollers who paid for it out of their own wages. You'll hear how a chosen reader worked the room, doing a different voice for every character, and how the rollers judged him with the blades in their hands. It traces where cigar names like Montecristo and Romeo y Julieta actually come from. Listen for the rhythm of blade on wood as you walk the factory floor.