Thunder.Gerbil wrote:Parodi. Have fun with that.
Parodis are 100% American tobacco, no Italian tobacco. They're just made in the Italian Toscano style.
Source: personal tour of the Avanti Cigar company factory led by its president, and the very interesting information he said along the way.
The tobaccos are fire-cured for a smoky taste. No, Jonathan Drew DID NOT invent the concept of using American fire-cured tobacco in cigars; the Avanti company and others have been doing it for over a century.
Some other fun tidbits he shared:
The founder was an Italian immigrant who spoke little English, so he had to get an interpreter to speak to an American lawyer about the formalities of forming the business. The lawyer said one of the requirements was that he needed a company seal, and due to a translation error, the Italian founder thought the lawyer meant a LITERAL seal, so the company seal has an actual seal (the animal) on it. They've kept it to the present day, just because it's so damned funny.
Parodi, De Nobili and Petri are the EXACT SAME product in all respects, absolutely zero difference except for the name and graphics on the boxes. They all come off the same line, from the same machines, made with the same tobaccos. So, why have three names? Because formerly, they were three separate companies (and thus actually slightly different cigars) before Avanti bought them all out, and older smokers living in different markets had formed different allegiances to the three brand names. They kept the three names, even though the product is now identical, to keep sales up. Avanti found that many smokers would say stuff like, "I'm a Parodi man, I wouldn't touch a De Nobili, they're garbage!" and the like, even though they'd been utterly identical for decades by that point. Amusing and insightful anecdote about consumer psychology.
They have an aging room that the president challenged any of us to simply stand in for 60 seconds or more. Just stand there. Only one guy in our tour group could do it, and just barely. The walls are lined with thousands of cigars all giving off ammonia, and it's nearly impossible to breathe in there without having coughing and wheezing fits and running desperately for the exit to get some clean air again.
The aforementioned lines, while made of fire-cured tobacco, don't have any flavorings added. Their self-titled "Avanti" line of cigars, however, are (very strongly) anisette flavored. The president said that a bunch of little old ladies have little paintbrushes and brush the flavoring liquid on the outside of every cigar by hand. We thought this was funny, until we reached that room. He wasn't kidding.
Good times!
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