Report (Permission Visit) Sigaren Den Hertogh, Belgium - April 2017

[jST]

Visited in April 2017 as part of a swift trip across Europe, beautiful building and industry, full of smells and textures, machinery and light - just perfect. Sammy, Shyness of a Camera and Cloth Head in attendance.

This was a pre-organised visit on the proviso we gifted the guy who ran the place some booze. The owner was super cool, he made us awesome coffee with thick sweet milk from a carton and told us that we had free reign. He’d recently sold the buildings and site to a developer and was in the process of winding his business down.

So many nooks and crannies to examine and just so many artefacts! You could track the production of cigars right from the raw tobacco, through the blending, to the formation of the cigars, to the manufacturing and presentation of the boxes readied for shipping.

A lot of photos, I couldn’t help myself - sorry.

Raw, dried tobacco from Indonesia.

Rolled but untrimmed cigars.

The loft, filled with shredded tobacco leaf.

Offices, every ash tray was filled with stubs. The owner seemed to walk around with a cigar in his mouth at all times.

 

[Brewtal]

Love it! I can almost smell the place looking at your pics. Fantastic report mate, thanks for posting this.

 

[TranKmasT]

Lovely photos as per. I like to treat myself big cigar occasionally. The kind that take me an hour over four pints of Birra Morretti to finish. The smell must of been incredible.

 

[Olkka]

MMMMmmm I say

 

[jST]

Lovely photos as per. I like to treat myself big cigar occasionally. The kind that take me an hour over four pints of Birra Morretti to finish. The smell must of been incredible.

Unique smell I'd say, they made the type of Cigars known as "European dry cured" which are a much harsher smoke than Cuban or Nicaraguan types that need to be humidity controlled. Hence the big pile of baccy in the loft.