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Two workers at a cigar-making bench in the Doña Elba Cigars workshop in Granada, Nicaragua, with a wooden mold of cigars in front of them and a mural of tobacco leaves behind
Field notes · Granada, Nicaragua

Inside Doña Elba Cigars

A firsthand look at cigar making in Granada, Nicaragua.

Original photography and video by Nicaraguan Cigars. Visited 9 November 2024.

An afternoon in Granada

Most of Nicaragua's cigars are made in the north, around Estelí, the country's main cigar manufacturing centre. But cigar making has a home in colonial Granada too. In November 2024 we spent an afternoon at Doña Elba Cigars, camera in hand.

This is a record of what we saw and filmed that day. It is not an interview and not a full factory tour. Everything below is either visible in our own photographs and video or something we saw in person.

Doña Elba Cigars

The company's name and round emblem are everywhere you look: above the entrance hall, on framed posters in the shop and on the shirts of the people at work. The building opens onto a hall of white columns, with a cigar shop on one side and the workshop beyond.

The Doña Elba Cigars emblem above an entrance hall with white columns in Granada

The Doña Elba Cigars emblem above the entrance hall.

Inside the workshop

The rolling room is bright and busy. A mural of giant green tobacco leaves covers the back wall. Workers sit at long wooden benches, each station with its own tools, a wooden cigar mold, a pile of dried leaf on black plastic sheeting and, along the front edge, a growing row of finished cigars. On one bench, a small wooden box is marked "TIP".

The rolling room at Doña Elba Cigars Workers at wooden benches in the rolling room, under a mural of tobacco leaves. Wooden molds, finished cigars and piles of leaf sit on the benches.

What we documented

We did not see the fields, the curing barns or the fermentation piles on this visit. Those stages happen long before a leaf reaches a rolling bench; follow them in From Seed to Legend.

Photo essay

From leaf to shelf

Dried tobacco leaves laid out on a workbench at Doña Elba Cigars in Granada, Nicaragua, with freshly rolled cigars behind
Dried tobacco leaf laid out on black plastic at a bench, with rolled cigars lined up behind.
Rows of freshly rolled cigars lined up on a workbench at Doña Elba Cigars in Granada
Freshly rolled cigars, lined up along the edge of a workbench.
Close-up of hand-rolled cigars standing in a row at Doña Elba Cigars in Granada
Up close, the cigars show the small variations of handwork.
A wood-shelved room lined with bundles and boxes of cigars at Doña Elba Cigars in Granada
A room lined floor to ceiling with bundles and boxes of cigars.
Shelves stacked with wrapped bundles of cigars at Doña Elba Cigars in Granada
Wrapped bundles of cigars stacked on wooden shelves.
A carved wooden display counter with cigar boxes in the Doña Elba Cigars shop in Granada
In the shop, cigar boxes rest in a carved wooden display counter.
Original footage

More from the visit

Leaf and finished cigars at the bench A close look along one bench: rows of freshly rolled cigars above sheets of dried tobacco leaf, with the workshop behind.
A room of shelved cigars A slow pan around a wood-shelved room stacked with bundles and boxes of cigars.

Why we film what we see

Most of what we publish comes from sources we cite: magazines, makers and official records. Our own photographs and video add something different: evidence of what we have seen with our own eyes. We keep the two apart. A visit like this one shows a workshop on a single afternoon; it is not an inspection or an endorsement, and it does not verify a company's wider claims. Read more about how we research and who we are.

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