Connecticut shade tobacco

Connecticut shade tobacco is a tobacco grown under shade in the Connecticut River valley of the U.S. states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and southernmost Vermont, and is used primarily for binder and wrapper for premium cigars.

Tobacco farming in the Connecticut Valley has a long history. When the first settlers came to the valley in the 1630s, tobacco was already being grown by the native population. Windsor, Connecticut is the epicenter for the tobacco industry in Connecticut. The town was founded in 1633 and within seven years it was producing tobacco for personal use and profit. The tobacco being grown was for pipe use, brought up from Virginia since the tobacco variety found in the Connecticut Valley was not as delectable as the Virginian style. It was immediately apparent that the soil from the river, a rich sandy loam, and the hot and short summer of New England yielded an excellent crop each year.

Eventually, the popularity of cigars became greater than the pipe. Broadleaf tobacco was the variety that dominated the scene. It was in such high demand that during the Civil War the Connecticut River Valley yielded up to ten million pounds per year. The fame of quality Connecticut tobacco was raved about throughout all the settled regions of the United States.

By 1700, tobacco was being exported via the Connecticut River to European ports. The use of Connecticut Valley tobacco as a cigar wrapper leaf began in the 1820s. By the 1830s, tobacco farmers were experimenting with different seeds and processing techniques.Knowing that they were not the only players in the cigar wrapper economy, farmers began planting a new tobacco species in 1875, the Havana Seed. Area farmers grew tobacco for the two outside layers of cigars, the binder and the wrapper. A tobacco leaf type named Shoestring, then Broadleaf and Havana Seed were used.

This smooth, good-looking leaf yielded a higher percent of wrapper quality cigars. Just a few decades later, in the Late 1890s, the Sumatra leaf was adopted for growth in Connecticut. The demand for high quality cigar wrapper was never ending. This pushed Connecticut growers and scientists to develop a leaf so smooth and golden that it would dominate the market. This means that farmers and scientists worked together to develop a hybrid just to beat out competition in Cuba and Asia. Using over thirty samples from Cuba and Sumatra, Shade Tobacco was born in 1900, and the first shade-leaf tent was put up on River Street in Windsor. This new plant meant new labor.

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Wikipedia