Skilled hands make great cigars. Watching this torcedora at the Matasa factory in DR is mesmerizing. Her fingers seem to dance as she massages the wrapper onto the cigar. At a rate of one cigar per minute, she can crank out around 400 cigars a day. Some work even faster yielding up to 600 cigars per day.
Cigar rollers work in pairs. Next to this torcedora is someone who bunches the tobacco and inserts the hand-formed cigars into a cigar mold. Once pressed into its cigar shape, the roller takes a cigar from the mold and applies the wrapper.
Using a Leiberman machine, this cigar-buncher forms cigars, then places them into the cigar-mold. (Davidoff, DR)
Cigars being pressed into perfect shape. The wrapper is then applied. (Davidoff, DR)
A cigar before and after pressing. (La Flor Dominicana, DR)
