Foundation Upsetters Small Ax

Melillo traveled to Jamaica for Bob Marley’s 70th birthday in February, 2015. After the celebrations he went searching the island for cigar tobacco and the old style Jamaican blending technics. In the mountains outside Montego Bay, Kingston, and the town of May Pen he found both. Melillo met one of the oldest cigar tobacco growers on the island, growing cow tongue, a tobacco cultivated and blended in those hills since indigenous Arawak planted it thousands of years ago.

THE UPSETTER’S story continues in Nicaragua, 500 miles to the west along an underwater Caribbean shelf known as the Nicaraguan Rise. There, another tobaccogrowing region thrives: el Valle de Estelí in northern Nicaragua, where Melillo’s roots lie and where Foundation’s production is based. “People don’t realize how close Jamaica and Nicaragua are geographically and their history together. The east coast of Nicaragua is also known as the Reggae coast. The combination is perfect.” says Melillo.