11 January—Maduro loves Connecticut. Maduro depends on Connecticut. Maduro probably wouldn’t even be worth writing about were it not for Connecticut. Maduro has been pretty inextricably linked to Connecticut for over a half century, in fact. Maduro, moreover, is pretty sweet and mellow. And you probably thought that Nicolás Maduro had nothing to do with Connecticut and had never even set foot in the state. And you probably were right.

Because it’s maduro cigars that love and depend on Connecticut. First, the Spanish word “maduro” means “mature” (obviously) and by extension “ripe” as applied to things like fruits and vegetables and “experienced” as applied to people. Like Nicolás Maduro?

It must be explained that cigars are made from filler (folded leaf in good cigars, shredded leaf in los cheapos) that’s wrapped in binder leaf that’s in turn wrapped in—one guess—wrapper leaf. Maduro refers to a cigar color, more specifically the color of the outer wrapper. Cigar colors range from claro claro (green, a.k.a. American Market Selection) to claro (tan) to colorado claro (reddish tan, a.k.a. English Market Selection) to colorado (reddish brown) to colorado maduro (between colorado and maduro, for lack of better description) to maduro (deep reddish brown to black) to oscuro (black as Pete Hegseth’s heart).

More important than color, though, while filler and binder are by no means flavor neutral, the wrapper leaves also impart specific flavors to cigars. And maduro wrapper leaves, through a longer, hotter, more humid fermentation process than any other cigar wrapper leaves, have more natural sugars and thus a sweet—some would say chocolate, coffee—taste. The extended humid fermentation also brings out natural oils that crystallize on the surface as a powdery white substance called bloom, often mistaken for mold.

Leaves intended for maduro wrappers come from the top of the tobacco plant, giving them more time in the sun, which gives them deeper color and makes them thicker. Are maduro leaves special or what? And maduro maduro cigars with maduro wrappers and maduro binders are extra special—like smoking a mocha bar, if such a thing exists.

So what’s maduro’s Connecticut connection? Well, Connecticut sun-grown broadleaf tobacco is the preeminent leaf used for maduro wrappers. (Connecticut shade-grown leaf for lighter premium cigar wrappers is a story with no Trump connection, so it’s not for now.) With things as they are today, alas, the special broadleaf is also grown in Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, and Nicaragua. And what’s still called Connecticut broadleaf tobacco and cultivated, albeit less abundantly, in the Connecticut River Valley in northern Connecticut and southern Massachusetts is also grown in Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Kentucky.

You’ve probably never heard of Thomas Marshall. He was a governor of Indiana who later served as Woodrow Wilson’s vice president for both terms. (Mike Pence was a governor of Indiana who later, to his credit, served only one term as Donald Trump’s vice president.) Marshall is perhaps best known for lamenting, “What American needs is a good five-cent cigar.”

That was then. What America needs now is a halfway decent five-dollar cigar . . .