Tobacco Around the World

Total Flame founder Maxim Privezentsev traced the tobacco leaf’s path from plantation to factory table and connected modern production with the history of Russian tobacco.

The central guest was Maxim Privezentsev — founder of Total Flame, writer, traveller and a prominent figure in Russia’s cigar community. In his lecture Tobacco Around the World, he followed the leaf from plantation to factory table and presented production as a combination of craft, philosophy and art.

The centrepiece was a tasting of the limited-edition Hero cigar, rarely available on the open market. Its historical point of departure was the Shapshal Brothers factory, the largest tobacco enterprise of the Russian Empire, founded in Saint Petersburg in 1873.

The modern Hero unites this legacy with Total Flame’s independent spirit and the creator’s personal experience. Its dedication to strong-minded people and the imagery of motorcycle brotherhood are expressed through a characterful blend based on Nicaraguan tobacco.

The cigar was made at the Plasencia factory in Nicaragua and released in 2025 for Total Flame’s fifteenth anniversary. That same year, Maxim Privezentsev received the Producer of the Year title at the Aficionado of the Year National Award.

Club chairman Dmitry Gribov proposed a parallel tasting: classic cigar smoking was compared with an alternative presentation of the same vitola prepared for a hookah. The experiment offered a fresh perspective on the flavour profile of Nicaraguan tobacco.

The meeting connected nineteenth-century Saint Petersburg, the valleys of Nicaragua and contemporary Moscow, showing that a cigar preserves not only flavour and aroma, but also a living continuity of time.