Before talking about our origins, it is appropriate to review the history of tobacco in the country. The earliest reference to tobacco in Costa Rica dates back to 1529 when Oviedo, a Spanish colonizer, observed the indigenous people smoking tobacco at a festival in Nicoya. During part of the colonial era, Costa Rica was responsible for supplying tobacco to the Kingdom of Guatemala, with the Costa Rica Tobacco Factory overseeing this task.
Tobacco was the driving force of the Costa Rican economy, even after independence. This prompted the state in 1960 to designate specific areas for its cultivation. They chose regions with fertile soil, ideal climate, tradition, and experience in cultivation, highlighting Puriscal as the most important tobacco-growing area in Costa Rica.
In that same period, in 1963, Olman León Guzmán was born in the town of Puriscal. He descended from two great tobacco-growing families in the area and would later become a tobacco industry leader.
In the 1980s, Puriscal was recognized as the premier tobacco-growing region. However, a decade later, production costs caused the country to lose competitiveness, demanding a business diversification
In 1997, Olman León, a visionary man, founded Tabacos de Costa Rica with the purpose of using regional tobacco to produce premium cigars. His desire to preserve the tobacco legacy and generate employment in Puriscal motivated this endeavor.
With the clear goal of producing the highest quality cigars, Tabacos de Costa Rica hired a Cuban master who rigorously trained the local rollers. Simultaneously, Olman visited leading industry companies to learn the best practices for tobacco cultivation, fermentation, and aging. Soon the company realized that by blending tobaccos from different countries, they could achieve higher quality cigars. This prompted TCR to start working with raw materials from multiple origins, allowing the company to be more competitive in the international market and to position itself as a manufacturer of premium quality cigars.
However, obtaining the best wrapper leaf became a challenge for TCR, motivating Olman to find suitable soil and climate for growing this type of tobacco. This journey took him to Ecuador, where in 2010, a subsidiary of Tabacos de Costa Rica was founded, focused on wrapper leaf cultivation.
With this growth, it became necessary to involve the next generation of the family, Olman León’s children, who supported TCR’s expansion process. In 2016, after years of exclusively manufacturing cigars for other brands, TCR decided to introduce its own brands to the international market.