After a lengthy internal debate about the blend, General Cigar began making Macanudo in 1971 with a new and unique blend of tobacco grown by the company and soon introduced it to the U. S. Edgar Cullman brought to bear all his 30 years of experience with fine tobacco leaves. He had always wanted Connecticut Shade for the wrapper, and from day one the wrapper was from a specially developed, specially picked and processed seed of tobacco. And the wrapper was aged two to three years. Only aged filler tobacco was used, as well.

Cullman had the help of another expert whose devotion to and love of tobacco was equal to his own: a Cuban from an old tobacco family, Ramón Cifuentes. Cullman credits Cifuentes with teaching him an enormous amount about tobacco and with instilling in General Cigar's workers important tobacco-handling and cigar-making techniques. As Cullman explains it, "There's a feel you have for tobacco, its silken leaves, how to stretch it - you either have it or you don't. You have got to always think of the leaf." Cifuentes "had" the feel.