After helping to promote a world famous cigar brand across Canada, Bermudian Milton Hill now wants to bring the art of the cigar home to Bermuda.

Two years ago, Mr. Hill stumbled into a career with F. Frank Correnti Cigars Ltd. in Toronto doing demonstration cigar rolling at upscale events like golf tournaments and red carpet functions. In November, he was on the Island scouting out ways to bring such events to Bermuda.

?I would like to set up a client base in Bermuda,? he said. ?That client base would be involved in buying cigars, but mainly for rolling events.?

Mr. Hill describes himself as a cigar roller who does sales and marketing events.

?That is about the easiest way I can describe it,? he said.

The cigar rolling at different events helps to get the word out about the company and increase its profile.

Not that the company profile needs much improvement. Correnti is already well-known in Canada and also in American Hollywood circles. As a result, Mr. Hill has had close encounters with many celebrities.

?A lot of movies are filmed in Toronto,? said Mr. Hill. ?A lot of the Hollywood crowd such as Charlie Sheen and Louis Gossett, Jr. smoke Correntis.

?We have a wall of celebrities that love our cigars and buy them in large amounts when they came up. I have met a couple of people off the comedy network.

?I met the ?Designer Guys?. They are from one of those design type shows. I have met more sports celebrities than I can shake a stick at most of which I don?t know because of the differences in Canadian sports.?

Now Mr. Hill wants to bring the joy of cigar rolling to his native shore.

?I am trying to bring events here,? he said. ?Truly interested people will find ways of ensuring that people will get our products here as well. Using my 40 years of life in Bermuda, I have been able to touch base with people. There has been a high degree of interest. At this point in time it is still very early to access how much interest.?

So far he has found the international business community are particularly interested in having cigar rolling demonstrations at executive functions in Bermuda.

?They just love it,? he said. ?There are other events set up at the function and you sit there and roll. We have a batch of pre-made ones, but people like to watch us do it.?

Mr. Hill has been living in Toronto for the last two years. He was working as a carpenter making mostly finished carpentry and trim, when the business went bust and he found himself out of work.

?I happened to live next door to the boss at Correnti, Johnny Miller,? said Mr. Hill. ?He was just a friend of mine until that point. He had a minor traffic thing so he lost his licence for a short period of time. He needed someone to drive him down to Fort Erie down by Niagara Falls for a celebrity golf event that he would be doing cigar rolling at.?

After Mr. Hill drove Mr. Miller to the event, he couldn?t help involving himself in Mr. Miller?s demonstration.

?I started speaking to the people at the event,? he said. ?There were a lot of Toronto sports figures from some of the major hockey and baseball teams there.?

Mr. Miller saw that Mr. Hill had a way with people, and because of the carpentry work, was good with his hands. He began to teach Mr. Hill how to roll cigars, a complicated and delicate procedure.

?I have been involved ever since mostly during celebrity golf events, and we do a lot of high-end venues around Toronto,? Mr. Hill said. ?The day before I came down to Bermuda we had an event with the Rogers Cable VPs. They are the national cable company in Canada. We were very well received.?

Correnti is a family-run company. Mr. Miller?s great grandfather started selling cigars in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1882. His parents relocated the business to Canada in 1956. Johnny Miller started helping to sell the cigars at age 12. In 1977 the Miller family purchased Frank Correnti Cigars Limited started by one of their own former employees.

?Any cigars that come out of Cuba, have to go through Habana House which is the agent in Canada for the product,? said Mr. Hill. ?We are the only ones who are not bound by that agreement. We are allowed to bring raw leaf from Cuba because of the long-standing relationship with the Cuban government, and we are able to bring raw leaf products right into Canada and make it.?

Mr. Hill said the only thing fresher would be to actually go to Cuba and watch it being rolled there, which he plans to do.

?I should be going down to Cuba within the early months of next year,? he said. ?The main thing I have been doing is practising. Rolling actually takes quite a bit of practice.?

He said the outside wrapper leaves, which are grown in partial shade, are actually very fragile. When these leaves are wrapped it is like working with wet rice paper.

The stalk of the leaf has to be removed with a deft twist of the roller?s hand.

?There shouldn?t be any damage to the leaf at all,? said Mr. Hill. ?The wrapper leaves are between $30 and $50 a pound, so they are extraordinarily expensive, and you can?t afford to rip them.?

Mr. Hill said the Cuban method of cigar rolling involves bunching the leaves together, and folding them in a W shape.

?There is another method of rolling cigars which is called booking which is used through some parts of central America,? he said. ?You take a stack of tobacco leaves and then roll them up and then put a binder around that, then the outside wrapper.

?The Cuban method is different where they bunch the leaves together. Most of it is based on if you are rolling cigars freehand without a bunching machine then you have to be able to feel when you have the right amount of tobacco in it. You have to be able to feel if there are any gaps or dips in the cigar, both of which would be unacceptable and would not make it a pleasurable smoke.?

He said the main tool in cigar rolling is a curved knife called a ?chaveta?. It is rolled along the top edge of the tobacco leaf to cut them off.

Cigar rollers also have to know how to work a cigar back into its proper shape after being in a box. Sometimes being boxed presses them into a more square shape.

?There is still lots for me to learn,? said Mr. Hill. ?I have been doing it for less than a year.?

One of the techniques he still has to learn is blending.

?Blending tobacco leaf is based on the height or the section of the tobacco plant that the leaf actually comes from,? he said. ?The leaves at the top are exposed to more sunlight and come out darker and have a spicier flavour. The leaves at the bottom are lighter in colour and give a milder flavour so you are blending between them.?

Some cigar aficionados actually prefer a spicier cigar. One well-known variety of this type of cigar is a robusto cigar, usually made from the top part of the cigar plant called the ?maduro?. Leaves from the lower part are called ?claro?.

?Many times they will have a maduro wrapper,? he said. ?That is almost a specialised thing. Only certain people have an acquired taste for those. Most people like a very smooth cigar with a hint of spiciness, but not too much. It would be a blend of claro and maduro leaves to get the blend that is preferred. Then we have special blends. Some of our clients will come to us they want a special blend. It varies so much. People can get custom orders.?

Mr. Hill said he always enjoyed having an occasional cigar, and since he started working at Correnti he has learned the difference between a cigar in a box and a cigar that has been freshly rolled. ?I do worry about health concerns, but I don?t smoke cigars to sufficient quantities to worry,? he said. ?I would get more smoke standing on a street corner in Bermuda or Toronto. The only times I really smoke cigars now is if I make a batch. While I am working, I will pull one off, light it, take a couple of puffs off it, because you want to see how it is actually burning and how you have made your fill. It is quality testing. Otherwise it is like working in a candy store, after awhile it doesn?t faze you at all. Many of the people involved in the business smoke only to that same degree.?

He said often his boss, Johnny Miller, can sometimes tell if a cigar is rolled right, just by looking at it. ?He has always smoked cigars,? said Mr. Hill. ?He will go around when he comes in and pull a couple of cigars off. He will let you know in no uncertain terms whether he approves or disapproves. Many times he can tell by feel and just looking at them whether they are okay.?

Mr. Hill?s own sense of touch has been heightened since he started working with cigars. This has its down side.

?I now get paper cuts over silly things whereas I didn?t do that before,? he said.

Mr. Hill lives in Toronto with his wife Karen and their two sons, Joshua, 17 and Ananda, 16.

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