Tobacco bulks are built with great care and kept under close watch. 



Recordings are made of the temperature in the center, and the bulks are 



"turned" or rebuilt every few days until fermentation has been completed. The 



tobacco is further sorted - leaf by leaf - sized, retied, packed into bales, 

 and stored in a cool place. 



The cigar filler and binder types (except Puerto Rican) normally receive 

 only a limited amount of handling prior to storage for aging. Most of the 

 tobacco is stored in farm bales as delivered by growers. These bales are 

 rectangular-shaped packages containing 40 to 50 pounds of tobacco wrapped in 

 brown paper with open ends. The tobacco is arranged with the butts to the 

 outside and the tips overlapping in the middle. The bales are often placed in 

 a heated sweat room several weeks before going into permanent storage. 



The use of reconstituted tobacco sheet for the inner binder of cigars 

 makes careful sorting of the leaf unnecessary. Only a tiny portion of binder 

 tobacco is now purchased for use as natural binder in premium cigars. 



In the case of the filler types, the trend is toward short filler, and it 

 is also unnecessary for these types to be carefully sized or sorted. Most to- 

 bacco used as short filler is bulk-sweated. 



Figure 37. -Interior of a tobacco storage warehouse. 



N-29180 



Figure 38.-Redried tobacco en route to storage warehouses. 



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