Day three of the 2026 Puro Sabor Festival is all about Nicaraguan culture and its history, or more specifically, the culture and history of the 500-year-old colonial city of Granada. Granada is the second leg of the festival tour before we complete our pilgrimage by heading north to the modern-day tobacco Mecca of Estelí.
Attendees of the festival have been divided into 9 groups that will remain together for the remainder of the festival. Today, each group will receive guided tours of Granada that will be broken up by a lavish, smokey lunch at the Palacio de Cultura, which sits adjacent to the Plaza Colon Hotel.
Though the focus of the day is culture and history, practically all places we visit, right down to the tour buses, are more than happy to have you smoke and enjoy cigars as you take in the tour. Those who wish to have a cigar burning throughout the day and into the night may freely do so.
Our tour guide is Juan Carlos Mendoza, who claims to have conducted tours for the likes of Michael Douglas and wife Catherine Zeta Jones, and even the late 39th President of the United States, Jimmy Carter. Truthfully, Juan Carlos is exceptional at what he does (he’s been providing Nicaraguan tours for over 30 years) and after today, I don’t doubt his claim in the slightest.
Today’s tours encompass several gorgeous colonial Catholic churches, the Fortaleza de la Pólvora (a centuries old fort-turned-museum of the Nicaraguan Revolution), and a charming Cacao chocolate factory, where the visitors get to pair their cigars with sumptuous chocolates and chocolate liqueur.
Lunch is joyous and jubilant, and is paired with the A.J. Fernandez Bellas Artes Toro cigars that are being handed out at entry. We’re now three days into the festival and people have become very socially disarmed, which, is typically inevitable when cigars are being enjoyed in warm, exotic locations (or anywhere for that matter).
Following a short bit of respite of writing back at the hotel Voco, I walk two blocks to the Hotel Dario for the evening dinner event, the “official” welcome dinner.
The dinner event provides me with a three-cigar sampler pack featuring two Mastranza cigars by RoMa Craft and a Barreda Don Chico Habano, a medium-bodied cigar made in honor of the late Francesco Barreda, a notable tobacco grower in Estelí.
On the microphone, Skip Martin of RoMa Craft invites the crowd to enjoy his Mexican-San Andres-wrappered Maestranza, a chunky box-pressed cigar that wowed me last year when it when it was provided at the lunch event on an island in Lake Nicaragua. It’s equally enjoyable tonight.
A fleet of dancers dressed in colorful traditional Nicaraguan costume entertain the crown for around 45 minutes which gets people out of their chairs and on to the dance floor to dance the night away.
Tomorrow’s departure for Estelí is an early one, and will feature a stop at the Victor Calvo farm en route. Time to turn in.
