A curiosity: the 100% Made in France cigar

It is in the small medieval village of La Bastide de Navarrenx, in Béarn, that a group of enthusiasts set themselves the challenge of making a 100% French cigar. A bold undertaking, and one that has attracted a good deal of attention.

A cigar idea comes to life

Take a group of French, Italian and Cuban cigar accessory enthusiasts. Add a determination to do things properly and a hint of opportunism. Shape it all with unrivalled craftsmanship and you get Cigare Navarre, a French company making its cigars entirely in France.

Thierry Frontère chose Béarn to plant his tobacco fields. It is the region of France that best combines the conditions the leaves need to grow.

Credit: La République des Pyrénées

Every stage takes place in France

From growing the tobacco to harvesting it, moistening the leaves, drying, fermenting, sorting and rolling, everything is made in France, and in Béarn at that. As an added detail, the rolling is done by two Cuban torcedoras: Delma and Olga left their country to come and roll the French cigars by hand.

This is how robustos and coronas with mild but no less aromatic notes come out of the Navarrenx workshop.

The newcomer is growing slowly but surely

Awarded the Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivant label, Le Cigare Navarre is not only an unusual venture but also one that follows long-established craft methods. As well as making cigars in one of the most beautiful villages in France, the workshop can now be visited. Open to the public, the tour begins at the cigar museum before moving on to the two torcedoras at work.

For connoisseurs and non-specialists alike, visiting such a curiosity on French soil is an introduction to the particular craft of cigar making. Other tobacco-growing areas exist in France, in the Lot for example, but Thierry Frontère pushed his ambition to what seemed unthinkable: making the first entirely French cigar.

They are not the only ones

La Manufacture des Cigares, based at La Chapelle de Guinchay in Burgundy, also offers a French cigar, but its leaves come from foreign terroirs (Cuba, Nicaragua, Peru, and others). It is nonetheless rolled in France.