At the end of the year 1791, numerous French settlers arrived in the regions of Santiago de Cuba and Guantanamo, due to the Haitian Revolution. Along with culture, architecture, and the French way of living they established coffee plantations using slave labor. They also brought the names of French descendants, would later be hispanized.

The skills and habits of those immigrants brought progress to these regions and introduced the consumption and commercialization of coffee in the national culture, making Cuba the largest producer of the grain worldwide.

I still remember those coffee plantations where, around 1928, my maternal grandfather, of French descent, founded in a place called Lajas de Yateras, what would be the settlement of his huge family: a five-caballeria farm, dedicated to the cultivation of coffee and other fruits.

My childhood memories of wandering through those exuberant coffee plantations come to my mind: the smell of the blooming coffee trees, the aroma of the drying room and its rudimentary processing. Toasted in a firewood stove and ground by hand in a small machine, the aromatic coffee was then savored at the family table.

The dream of uniting the pleasures of tasting both coffee and tobacco together, emerged over the years, while I was working on the creation of my cigar brand.