The aroma of a burning cigar is distinctive and strong, yet few Connecticut residents know that a type of tobacco leaf used in the world’s fi nest cigars grows right under their proverbial noses. The tobacco crop known as Connecticut shade is used as the outer most layer—or wrapper leaf—of dozens of top cigar brands cross the globe, and it has been that way since the beginning of the 20th century.Parrish, starring Troy Donahue, Claudette Colbert, and Karl Malden, romanticized the joys and agonies of life onTo learn more about the history of tobacco leaf production in New England, visit the John E. Luddy/Gordon S. Taylor Connecticut Valley Tobacco Museum located at Northwest Park, 135 Lang Road, Windsor. Call 860- 285-1888 for the hours of operation.

The namesake for this exquisite wrapper leaf, renowned for its light caramel color, smooth veins, and mild fl avor when smoked as part of a premier cigar, describes the manner by which the tobacco plants are grown; under tents made of a synthetic cloth used to project the leaves from the bright, direct Connecticut summer sunlight.

The shade, early growers discovered, mimics the perpetually overcast tropical conditions on the island archipelago of Sumatra, Indonesia, where the seeds for the tobacco plants grown in Connecticut originated. Connecticut farmers, who were already growing openfield broadleaf tobacco but wanted to try another variety, ventured to Indonesia at the end of the 1800s to gather the Sumatra tobacco seed.

During the 1700s and 1800s, “broadleaf was the standard,” says Jason Jackman, curator of the Luddy/ Taylor Connecticut Valley Tobacco Museum in Windsor.

“[After that], then we thought we could grow Sumatra up here. The fi rst few times it burned up in the sun as soon as the leaves got big enough to pick just because they

were more delicate. In Sumatra it was always overcast, hot, and humid—not a lot of direct sunlight.”

A quick solution was found when the first shade tent was erected on River Road in the Poquonock section of Windsor in 1900.

“The shade cover blocked out just enough sun and kept it about 15 degrees hotter and more humid inside the tents,” says Jackman.

That simple tenting technology is still employed today on what few acres remain of the once-vast Windsor shade tobacco farms. To form the tents, posts are laid out in a grid pattern across entire fi elds, and wires are stretched from post to post as a support system for the cloth. With the sea of white fabric suspended overhead and draped

down the sides along the edge of each shade field, the tobacco plants are snug and happy in their tropic-like micro climate.

In these conditions, during the months of May to September, the shade tobacco leaves grow as much as one inch per day and achieve a height of some eight feet by the end of the growing season.

In the 113 years that shade tobacco has been cultivatedin Connecticut “most of the technology [has remained] pretty much the same,” states Jackman. “It really hasn’t

been automated any more than it was. [In May] someone rides on the back of the tobacco setter, physically taking the plants from trays and putting the plants [that were germinated in the greenhouses] into the ground.”

Beginning in July the shade tobacco leaf harvest begins. The leaves are hand-cut in groups of three or four at a time. The process is called priming, and it starts at the bottom of each plant and works upward as the plant continues to grow through the hot summer.

“They used to have kids priming the leaves,” Jackman says, “but now it’s whoever they can get.”

That means more migrant workers from foreign countries, which results in labor shortages and is just one of many issues plaguing the industry today.

Although tobacco was grown throughout New England by the Native American populations, the early European settlers followed suit and found the area soils ideal for growing tobacco. In particular, the loamy, fertile soil of the Connecticut River Valley—last deposited 10,000 years ago by the glacial ice sheets—provided a perfect soil for growing tobacco.

By 1700, Connecticut tobacco grown in open fi elds was exported via boats down the Connecticut River to distant ports to meet demand for premium cigar manufacturers in

countries that still produce those cigars today, in particular Nicaragua and Honduras.

During the Connecticut shade tobacco heyday of the 1940s and 1950s, nearly 31,000 acres of tobacco were cultivated in the Connecticut River Valley. While the shade

tobacco grown in the valley covers fewer than 800 acres today, shade tobacco is still a viable business, growers say. In 2011 (the most recent year in which numbers were available) shade tobacco was the state’s number-one agricultural export in terms of dollars, amounting to $26.5 million, according to the New England Field Offi ce of the

National Agricultural Statistics Service.

With such a historically important agricultural crop grown in the heart of New England, Hollywood did not miss the opportunity to celebrate the heyday of Connecticut’s shade tobacco industry. The 1961 film

tobacco farms in the Connecticut River Valley from 1948 to 1953. Based on the 1958 book of the same name by New London, Connecticut, native Mildred Savage, the dramatic history of the shade tobacco family empires resonates in

the memories of the descendents of the early Connecticut tobacco farmers.

One of those descendants is Kathi Brown Martin of Brown’s Harvest in Windsor, whose great-grandfather James Brown founded the family farm in 1874.

While Brown’s Harvest has enjoyed great success with shade tobacco in the past, history is changing suddenly—and not for the better. Last year, for the fi rst time, Brown’s cultivated no shade tobacco because of the increasing number of problems plaguing the once-vibrant industry.

“There are so many challenges besides just growing,”Martin says. “You’ve got new diseases coming in like the potato virus that really affected the crops, and as potatoes

increase it really affects the quality of the tobacco.”

When addressing the prevalent labor problems in farming today, Martin admits, “Labor is a big problem. Getting workers to come in on time, having enough workers, making sure that they’re legal—-it’s tough,” she says. “The days when local kids worked the fields are gone.”

Martin notes that between keeping pace with rising fuel costs, increasing insurance fees, and health insurance mandates, “the costs are going up on everything, and your

[sales] prices aren’t keeping pace with the rising costs…It’s very frustrating.”

Martin says she doesn’t want to rule out returning to shade farming, but “right now the conditions are not right,”to make growing shade tobacco worth the expense.

To keep her hands in the tobacco industry Martin is growing broadleaf tobacco, like her great-grandfather.

“[Broadleaf] is still a good leaf and there’s less cost per acre,” she says.

Broadleaf, which is also used as a wrapper for a number of cigar brands, is darker and thicker,and holds up better when assaulted by the potato virus, molds, and other environmental challenges, according to Dr. Jim LaMondia of the Agricultural Experiment Station in Windsor.

When it comes to plant disease, “shade tobacco is most vulnerable to the recent

increase in viruses,” says LaMondia. “The potato virus is a series of viruses called potyvirus and [they] are only transmitted by aphids feeding on living plants,” LaMondia explains. “This potato disease has an impact on potatoes, but it has a much greater impact on tobacco. Some of them are necrotic, meaning they can cause death of cells in the tobacco plant. Others make it diffi cult to cure [the wrapper leaf] uniformly, and we want cigar wrappers that are perfectly uniform in color and we can’t have green and brown and dark spots [on the leaves]. That makes for an unappealing

cigar wrapper.”

There is no stopping the virus once it enters the area, LaMondia explains, since “the virus can literally be transmitted in seconds” as the aphids move from plant to plant. “So even if you apply insecticide to kill the aphids they transmit the virus before they die,” LaMondia says.

In a nutshell, the closer a tobacco fi eld is to potatoes, the closer the farmer is to

the source of potential virus and the more likely the tobacco will suffer damage.

“Potato acreage has been going up, particularly in Massachusetts and also in Connecticut,” LaMondia says, “but [shade tobacco] acreage has been going down, and quite dramatically, in the last half a dozen years.”

So while the market has been goodfor potatoes in recent years, tobacco— historically one of Connecticut’s most important crops—is suffering, and yields have reduced dramatically. That translates to a huge loss in tax revenue for Connecticut, according to agricultural statistics.

Only three or four shade tobacco farms remain in Connecticut, operating on fewer than 800 acres in 2013. Fortunately, “broadleaf is still holding its own,” LaMondia says, “and a number of people who grew shade are now growing broadleaf."

All these factors—labor costs, disease, summer storms—add to the already high cost of tending and harvesting shade tobacco plants. As a result, to keep their own costs down, more and more cigar manufacturers are turning to the same Connecticut seed grown into cover leaf from places like Ecuador or Honduras as a cheaper alternative to Connecticut-grown shade wrapper leaf.

“The name ‘Connecticut’ is still attached to wrapper leaf grown in southern countries [because] they really care about the name,” states Jackman. “When they put the name ‘Connecticut’ on the cigar, they can charge a little more for it.”

While the shade tobacco industry in Connecticut—where the wrapper leaf was pioneered and perfected—is in decline, Connecticut still lights up when it comes to producing the world’s best cigar wrapper tobacco leaf. And as long as there are cigar

smokers it’s a fair bet there will still be Connecticut wrapper leaf for use on the

world’s fi nest cigars, even if shade tobacco is replaced entirely by broadleaf.

“There’s another big grower that’s gone out, too—[Jarmoc Tobacco]—because this potato virus is really destructive to the industry,” Martin laments. “You can thank the potato growers for that when you’re eating their French fries. The smokers of fine cigars should be nervous.”