President at thirty

At just under thirty, Didier Houvenaghel, President of the Nicarao Company, holds university degrees in two separate fields and speaks three languages. He was born in Brussels, has travelled to innumerable countries, and now lives in Paris. He began working for the European Comission, but gave up the job to create his own cigar brand. He has published a book, entitled Le Cigare: de la culture а l'art. Here in this interview for our magazine, he talks about the practical application of theoretical knowledge.

To begin with, can you tell us why you decided to give this interview in Spanish and not in your native French?

Spanish is like another native language for me: I’ve been speaking it fluently for about seventeen years. My father, who is a professor of oceanology at Brussels University, worked at one time in Latin America and made a lot of friends there. When they used to come to dinner, Spanish was frequently spoken at home, and I didn’t want to be left out. Basically, I’ve always found it easy to learn languages. At school, I learned English and German, and my parents wanted me to become a linguist or a diplomat. I didn’t do what they expected but the knowledge and interest in languages has stayed with me. Ideally, I would like to be able to speak to everyone without a translator that way you get to know what the person you’re talking to is really like, and that means you understand them better. So whenever I get the chance, I spend time learning languages. And I’m ready to bet that the next time we meet, we’ll be speaking in Russian.

You’ve already found a teacher?

Not yet, no. I usually start with teach-yourself books. They provide a basis, which can be expanded with new vocabulary taken from books written in the original language. Today, for instance, when I was walking round Moscow, I went into a bookshop and picked up several decent text-books.

So you just can’t get away from the student habit of learning, learning and learning?

I pretend to be an ‘eternal student’ so as not to seem a bore. After all, it’s only students and white-haired old men that can make long-winded discourses and get away with it. I’m a good few years away from the latter, so I’m left with passing myself off as the former. But, to be serious… You see, even as a child I began to realize by watching my own parents that learning the realities of life does not have to make you feel depressed or lose your delight at appreciating the world. Curiosity and the need to learn something new are what move the world.

So you didn’t smoke your first cigar just for the sake of it, but to “learn something new”?

I did indeed. In my first year at Brussels Free University, I got friendly with some-one on my course who, despite his rather young age, continually smoked cigars. And a cigar is a capricious thing; it doesn’t like to be smoked alone. So it was not long before two future engineer-agronomists were smoking away together. My friend smoked his cigar more slowly than I did, because he was always telling me about the history of cigars, about the different brands and formats, and about cigar etiquette. I found it very interesting – it was like going on a special intensive course. I would puff away with great enjoyment and listen and try to remember everything.

And his stories were so interesting that you decided to go to the other side of the world?

I went to Cuba because I was passionately in love. Not with cigars but with a girl. Actually, it was Columbia I went to because of the girl. During the day, I’d study sugar-cane growing for a post-grad degree, but I’d spend the evenings trying to win the girl’s heart. As it happened, the relationship with the girl didn’t work out, but my agronomy studies resulted in my going to the University of Pinar del Rio. Once there, sugar cane went right out of my mind, because I just couldn’t resist the temptations around me in that land of enticing tobacco. So I decided to do another degree and was successful.

Presumably, things were not that easy in Cuba for a Belgian lad coming from a professor’s family?

The university milieu in any country in the world even a poor communist country is a special subculture. For me, the year in Cuba was a gift from Providence: nowhere else in the world could I have obtained so much theoretical and visual information on tobacco in general and on the production of cigars in particular. I felt like an ordinary mortal who had been allowed into the world of the chosen. The lectures given by my favourite professors Santos Bustio Dio and Leonel Dias Bomnin whom I still see; the numerous friendships and acquaintances I made; the visits to the finest plantations; and the studies devoted to the complex processes that go into the making of every individual cigar – all this gave me immeasurably more than I could have got at any European university. Although, I admit that my knowledge of tobacco and cigars to this day is a mere drop in the ocean.

But many famous cigar manufacturers never graduated from any university and yet it didn’t stop them from being at the top of their profession. Take Don Alejandro Robaina…

Don Alejandro is altogether an extraordinary man. I think of him as my role-model. I first met him, when I went as a tourist on an excursion to his plantation, not daring to think that I’d even get to see the great man. These excursions took place so frequently that I was sure that Don Alejandro must be bored and possibly even annoyed by them. So I was absolutely amazed when the old man not only came out to me but spoke to me first. I didn’t get embarrassed or anything, and it ended up with us spending at least three hours sitting and chatting about tobacco and cigars. Then he invited me back and I’ve been taking advantage of his invitations ever since. There aren’t many natural talents like Don Alejandro left.

But you haven’t answered my question…

Let me put it this way: I’m quite sure that for a European who has never had anything to do with the cigar industry and that has grown up far from the traditional tobacco regions, but still dreams of launching his own cigar brand I’m quite sure that such a person must have a systematic, scientific approach to what for the Cubans and the Nicaraguans is simple and obvious. Each man has his own means to achieve his goal, but sometimes different roads lead absolutely different people to similar results. My method is to have made a thorough detailed study of cigars, which are not only my business, but my main hobby.

At what stage on that road did you decide to create your own cigar brand?

These days, I get the feeling that I’ve always wanted to from the moment I tried my first cigar. But actually, the idea began to take shape much later. After the year I spent in Cuba and with my post-grad degree under my belt, I returned to Europe. I left Brussels for Paris and went to work for the European Commission. But every so often, I would take a break from the routine and travel at my own expense to Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua, where I made the acquaintance of a huge number of people, all of whom were totally involved in cigars. I really envied them in the best sense of the word because they were doing what they liked best. After a chat with one of my friends, Arsenio Ramos Mendez, a Cuban master blender, who had gone to Nicaragua after the revolution, I realized that the time had come to turn my teenage dream into reality. I came back to Paris from that trip with the firm decision to create my own brand. I made a study of the French and Belgian markets, and discovered that all the conditions were there for launching a new brand of quality cigars at reasonable prices. 

So you started to look for a producer?

Yes. I made use of my knowledge and my contacts. Arsenio introduced me to Eduardo Fernandez, who owned several tobacco plantations in Nicaragua, a factory in Esteli, and a company called Tabacalera Tropical, one of the largest distributors of cigars and tobacco in the world. Everything came together. First, I had no doubts about the quality of the tobacco. The climatic conditions in Nicaragua are second only to those in Cuba, and furthermore, at Eduardo’s plantations in Esteli and Jalape, they grew the Cuban Criollo 98 and Corojo 99 varieties. Secondly, there were a lot of specialists working for Eduardo who had originally come from Cuba, and they included cigar rollers and master blenders (Arsenio Ramos Mendez was one of these and he would be responsible for selecting the special combinations of tobacco required for my cigars). Thirdly, Eduardo was the sort of person I felt I could trust implicitly. So in 1999, I showed him my business plan, and he approved it… And the new cigar brand Nicarao was born.

Did it take you a long time to come up with a name? 

Not so much long as intensive. I had about ten alternatives, each of which had justifiable reasons to be chosen, but opinions from close friends and interested parties differed. I had the final word, but my selection was not subjective. The name we settled on arouses numerous historical associations which are, as it were, in tune with modern times. Nicarao was a courageous aboriginal Indian chief who personally met the Spanish conquistadors, and his name can be found in encyclopaedias. According to historians, Nicarao brought rich gifts of gold and silver to the ‘gods descended from heaven’ as a sign of his goodwill. But he also brought them dark brown dry leaves from a plant, which was unknown to the Europeans but which the Indians smoked, placed on wounds and used in their rituals. The Spanish were delighted with the chief’s gifts, and several decades later, the land where Nicarao had met the Spanish, was named Nicaragua in his honour. It seemed to me that that Indian chief would like the idea that in the 21st century, his name would appear on cigars produced in his native land.

When did the first batch of cigars named after the legendary Indian first appear in the shops?

Three years later. All that time we were permanently engaged in a lot of serious work. Arsenio developed a mixture after trying various combinations. I was totally involved in the marketing and it was essential to clarify the requirements of the French and Belgian markets (as I mentioned, these were what we were initially looking at) so as to chose the most popular vitolas. In the end, we came up with a line consisting of four formats: Minuto (designed for a half-hour smoke), Robusto (for a forty-five minute smoke), Piramide (for an hour smoke) and Julia (for a smoke lasting one hour and fifteen minutes). I also spent a lot of time looking for top-class logo, packaging and cigarband designers and this meant travelling to almost every country in Europe till I finally found what I wanted in Holland. Still, the work was pleasant: I’d never done anything like this in my life before and had to learn as I went along. But the real joy came at the end of 2002, when the first two and a half thousand cigars appeared in the Belgian and French cigar shops.

Weren’t you worried that they might just gather dust on the shelves?

My partners and I had done everything to ensure that this didn’t happen. My main job was to let the world know that real quality cigars need not be as expensive as was generally thought. We knew that there were plenty of smokers in Belgium and France, and many had deserted the ‘army’ of cigarette-smokers and joined the ‘regiment’ of cigar-smokers, after trying Nicarao cigars. And after the open tastings that took place in several shops in Brussels and Paris, professional critics began talking about Nicarao. We’ve done a lot in three years, and I’m pleased at the thought that there’s still plenty more to be done.

So, did you write your book Le Cigare: de la culture a l’art to promote your Nicarao cigars? Come on, admit it!

Not at all! There’s not a word about Nicarao cigars in the book. I had the idea of writing it a long time ago, when I first went to Cuba. While I was doing my degree work, I had to spend a lot of time in the libraries looking at masses of written sources. And it soon became clear to me that the majority of European, Cuban and American books on cigars, despite their apparent variety, were in fact repetitions of each other. I wanted to find a universal publication, which gave a concise and easily understandable account of the various aspects of cigar-making and on the rules of cigar tasting, but I couldn’t. A few years later, when I’d created my own cigarbrand, I set down the basic theses and began work on the book. I studied loads more sources, held consultations with my Cuban professors, and mixed with lots of ordinary smokers to prove to myself one more time that there was a need for a popular publication on cigars and smoking culture. In May this year, my book was published in French by a Belgian publishing house.

Weren’t you afraid of being criticized by the professionals in the cigar industry, for whom both the form and the content of your book might seem a little too oversimplified?

I wrote the book for a wide circle of readers; I had no plans to say anything new to the cigar world. What I wanted to do was rather to summarize everything that had been said before, and put it in layman’s language. I’m not out to impose upon the reader; I just want to set out the facts, which I have grouped into eight sections. The first is about the history of tobacco growing and the beginning of cigar smoking in Europe. The second deals with tobacco as a plant. The third gives an idea of all the processes relating to fermentation which precede the actual rolling of the cigar: drying, maturing, fermenting etc. The fourth section is devoted to the structure of the cigar and its components. The fifth treats the taste and aroma of the cigar, and the sixth gives the rules of tasting. The seventh is concerned with the ‘death’ of the cigar, and what its ashes can tell us about it. The final part of the book relates to practical recommendations on how to choose a suitable cigar. It’s a shame that I have to skip through it so quickly without being able to give you examples and show you some of the nuances. But there is every reason to hope that in the near future the book will be translated into Russian, and then Russian readers can make their own minds up about it as they have done about my Nicarao cigars.

So you intend to take Moscow on two fronts?

You bet! But the main aim is for Nicarao to win the hearts of Russian and American smokers. I told you, I intend to learn Russian. Did you think that it was just out of love for Tolstoy and Chekhov?

Cigar Clan 4'2006 vol.1. Svetlana Tarasova