Manifatture Sigaro Toscano S.p.A., the company that produces a historic Italian product. Born in 1818 in the Florence factory, the State Monopolies produced the famous cigar until 2004, when the British American Tobacco Italia purchased from the Italian Ente Tobacco - Entity created for privatization - all production activities, commercialization and distribution of smoking products before under the management of the Monopolies. In July 2006, the company returned to Italian hands, thanks to the acquisition by the Industrial Group Maccaferri, led by the homonymous historic Bolognese family.
Manifatture Sigaro Toscano History
In 1818 Ferdinando III, Grand Duke of Tuscany, founded a tobacco factory in Florence in which fermented cigars were produced, whose tobacco, after being accidentally wet by a downpour, was left to dry and, because it was not lost, used for cigars of low cost, which soon met the favor of smokers, crossing the borders of the Grand Duchy, so much so that, around the middle of the nineteenth century in Naples it produced a similar one that was called "Fermentato Forte", or "Napoletano", as it was called later.
The history of the Group is linked to that of the Maccaferri family and began in 1879, the year in which the "Company Maccaferri Raffaele Officina da Fabbro" was registered, in Zola Predosa in the province of Bologna.
Here the first wire drawing machine was installed and the gabions were produced for the first time by hand. A reality that has been able to adapt to changes in the competitive scenarios on the reference markets, with a well-defined strategy: industrial vocation, diversification, internationalization.
Ancient Cigar Nostrano del Brenta - 1763
Thanks to an agreement signed with the Consorzio Tabacchicoltori del Monte Grappa with the Sigaro Toscano Manifatture, the Antico Sigaro Nostrano del Brenta is sold in tobacconists.
The cigar, produced in 150 thousand copies, is entirely handmade and bears an evocative name of the Serenissima: Doge. For now the production numbers are small but it is the owners' desire to grow and reach all the resales in Italy.
The story of the Brenta cigar is very interesting, made of clandestinity and smuggling. Along one of the most important rivers in the area, from Valstagna to Campese di Bassano del Grappa, the cigars began to produce at the end of 1500, about a century after the arrival of tobacco in Europe from the discovery of the Americas. Only in 1763, almost two centuries later, the representatives of the Republic allowed the farmers to cultivate it legally. The cigar Nostrano, ancestor of what is the Doge, is however already known, so that there are historical records that speak of cigars smoked by the Venetian lords already in 1677. In the following centuries the community of the Canal di Brenta, hit by very heavy famines, he made a virtue of necessity. Prohibited first by the Republic, then by Vienna and finally by Italian financiers for tax reasons, Nostrani cigars did not officially exist but were regularly consumed throughout Veneto, thanks to a widespread distribution network that started from Bassano and reached the whole region.
This illegal trade went on until 1939 when sixteen farmers formed a cooperative called "Consorzio tobacconists of the Grappa" where they mainly dealt with cigarette tobaccos, always leaving space for cigars to pass clandestinely.
Now, thanks to the involvement of the Region, the consortium has found an agreement with the Maccaferri group, the majority owner of the Sigaro Toscano Manifatture, to bring back this historic cigar. The handicraft part of the production will continue on the banks of the Brenta, with ten cigar makers who will deal with the packaging of cigars manually, while the industrial and mechanized one will move to Lucca.