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Since the late 1400's, tobacco use and tobacco agriculture have spread around the world. But top quality cigar tobaccos won't grow just anywhere. They need a particular soil composition and specific weather conditions to thrive and develop to their full potential. The list of places that grow the best of the best is surprisingly short, spanning the globe in a narrow tropical band where temperatures average 75 to 81 Fahrenheit degrees and humidity is just over 70 percent during the growing season.

An ancient Javanese transcript 'Babad Ing Sangkala' (1601) shows that tobacco crops have flourished in Indonesia for Centuries, especially on Java Island, where tobacco has been planted and harvested using the same traditional methods for many generations.

The first modern tobacco plantation was established by Jacobus Nienhuys, the Dutch Businessman, in 1863 as a result of his quest for high quality tobacco that he knew could be grown successfully in the region known at that time as the 'East Indies.'

His first plantation was on the land near the Ular and Wampu rivers on Sumatra Island.

It is commonly known that the best tobacco for cigars comes mainly from tropical areas such as Latin America, the Caribbean and Indonesia. The islands of Sumatra and Java , perfectly situated in the Indonesian Archipelago, meaning a group or string of islands, yield fine quality export tobacco used in the production of premium cigars. The tobacco, known as the Java and Sumatra varieties, is actually grown on the group of islands surrounding these two major islands.

Nowadays, tobaccos grown on Sumatra and Java are grown using many of the same methods and techniques, descended from Cuban seeds, just as they were in the 1600's. They are widely recognized as the world's finest because of the island's particular combination of tropical weather and volcanic soil, which mimic more closely than any other region of the world, the growing conditions found in Cuba.

On Sumatra there are 16 plantations having an overall cultivation area of some 20,000 hectares-which are planted in 5 to 6 yearly rotation, thus giving an annual cultivation expanse of about 4,000 hectares. The Sumatra tobaccos are exclusively produced by one large state plantation.

In the Besoeki tobacco province, an area of east Java, 5,000 to 6,000 hectares are bedded, in biennial rotation. And in Central Java, there is Java-Vorstenlanden tobacco cultivation. The Besoeki tobacco from Java is often referred to as the "regal" tobacco and is world famous for its consistency and characteristics that are ideal for great cigars.

Recently, TBN, an abbreviation for "tembakau bawah naungan", translated as "tobacco under shade" or shade grown tobacco, a strain of Connecticut seed tobaccos, has been widely cultivated here.

As previously mentioned, Indonesia is one of the oldest producers of quality cigar tobacco in the world, with a leaf-growing history that dates back to the 1600's. But, despite such a strong tobacco history combined with what is a perfect climate for growing premium tobacco in ideal volcanic ash enriched soil, Indonesia has generally lacked the respect of premium cigar marketplace.

Unfortunately, there is a general lack of knowledge and understanding, for a variety of reasons, of the high quality Indonesian grown cigar tobacco. Interestingly enough, many of the world's top cigar manufacturer's buy thousands of bales of excellent quality wrapper, binder, and filler from Java and Sumatra for rolling in the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Miami.

Now, a "Pure Indonesian," with all the best the region and the culture has to offer, is available to the discriminating premium cigar smoker... Wismilak Premium Cigars.