Cuban cigar artisan making his mark in Connecticut

As I’m writing this, rumors of a forthcoming announcement are still swirling. I just heard that the stories are “more credible by the hour,” but so far nothing concrete. In the meantime, The Advocate has a Cuban success story that made me smile.
Excerpt:

For 45 years, Hernandez worked as a roller at the Partagas factory in Havana, which he left 14 years ago, and at a factory in the Dominican Republic, where he remained until six months ago when he immigrated to New York City.
It was there that he saw an advertisement for a cigar roller posted in the Spanish newspaper La Prensa. Amador took out the ad at the request of Ronald and Brian Shapiro, the father-and-son owners of the Cigar Factory Outlet.
Of the three rollers who replied to the ad, Hernandez impressed the Shapiros the most. He was interviewed by representatives of the Oliva Cigar Family, which provides Cigar Factory Outlet with bales of the 3-year-old Nicaraguan tobacco Hernandez uses.
“After they had him interviewed, they said this was the roller for us,” Ronald Shapiro said.

His presence has been a boon to his employer’s Thursday night cigar club:

“There’s a fascination about someone of his caliber rolling cigars, so it brings in a lot of additional traffic,” Ronald Shapiro said. “…He has hands of gold.”

Hernandez does not share the American obsession with tobacco related health concerns:

“Where I’m from in Cabaiguan, most people live to over 95,” Hernandez said. “It’s because there you get up in the morning and you smoke quality tobacco, you drink between ten to fifteen cups of coffee a day, you drink whiskey and you make love five times a week.”

Read the entire article here.