Sumatra / Deli

Thin, silky and reddish-brown, with very low oil and an almost papery hand. It gives dry cedar, faint sweetness, dried mushroom, light earth and a slightly sour finish, all at low intensity. Nicotine is minimal. It burns quickly and cool, which is exactly what a dry-cured European cigar wants and why it dominated that market. As a wrapper on a full-bodied handmade it is usually overwhelmed.

Wrapper grading is dominated by leaf size and color consistency; the middle primings give the broadest and most uniform leaves. Upper leaf is thicker and generally routed to binder.

Volcanic alluvial soil on the Deli plain around Medan, deep and fertile, historically farmed on a long rotation that let land lie fallow for years between tobacco crops. That rotation was central to the leaf's old reputation.

Equatorial, wet and consistently humid with little seasonal variation. Leaf is grown in the open but the cloud and haze of the wet tropics keep light diffuse.

Dutch planters opened the Deli plantations from 1863, and for decades Sumatra wrapper was auctioned in Amsterdam and Bremen as the world's benchmark leaf. Nationalization after Indonesian independence and the collapse of the fallow rotation system changed both the economics and the quality.

Much reduced - state-run plantations grow a fraction of the historic acreage, and Ecuadorian Sumatra-seed leaf has taken most of the premium market.