Field of Dreams

Florida Sun Grown Brings Tobacco Farming Back to Florida

- HEATHER MACHOVINA

FLORIDA HAS AN ILLUSTRIOUS HISTORY of growing the world’s finest cigar tobacco. It began in the 1820s when a Virginian moved to Gadsden County to experiment with tobacco as a market crop. By 1860, more than half of the counties were reported by the state to be growing tobacco. In the 1890s, many Cubans came to Florida to escape the war and blockades, and they established large tobacco farms in Fort Meade. Florida’s tobacco production reached almost 1.5 million pounds annually. Florida cigar tobacco was booming by the 1920s, with more than 25 percent of the United States shade tobacco produced here, continuing through the 1940s. Unfortunately, due to many factors including the invention of the cigarette and high costs of American labor, the cigar industry dwindled each year until the last crop of Florida cigar tobacco was grown in 1977.

Florida Sun Grown Tobacco Farm, located in Clermont, Florida, is bringing back a piece of this renowned history as the only farm in Florida to grow cigar quality tobacco today.

Jeff Borysiewicz, president & founder of Corona Cigar Co., has been successfully building his retail cigar business for over 20 years. He proudly owns four locations in Florida and sells millions of cigars each year. Today, he is also the proud owner of a cigar tobacco farm in Clermont, Florida. But why venture into farming after all these years with a flourishing retail business? “I simply did this to bring back a little piece of history to Florida,” Borysiewicz says.