Wikipedia: Windsor, Connecticut - Connecticut Shade Tobacco

Connecticut Shade Tobacco
Tobacco farming in Connecticut has a long history. When the first settlers came to the valley in the 1630s, tobacco was already being grown by the native population. By 1700, tobacco was being exported via the Connecticut River to European ports. The use of Connecticut tobacco as a cigar wrapper leaf began in the 1820s. By the 1830s, tobacco farmers were experimenting with different seeds and processing techniques.

Area farmers grew tobacco for the two outside layers of cigars, the binder and the wrapper. A tobacco leaf type named Shoestring, then Broadleaf and Havana Seed were used. In the late 1800s a fine grained leaf type imported from Sumatra began to replace the wrapper from the Connecticut River valley. The tobacco farmers matched the Sumatran leaf by making shade tents of cloth to cut sunlight and raise humidity. The first tent was raised in 1900 on River Street in Windsor. Windsor tobacco leaves are highly prized by fine cigar makers, and are used as the cigar's outer wrapping. The former president of U.S. operations for Davidoff, a Swiss maker of luxury goods company including premium Cuban cigars, praised Connecticut shade tobacco as "A nice Connecticut wrapper" and "…very silky, very fine. From a marketing point of view, it is considered at the moment to be one of the best tasting and looking wrappers available" in a Cigar Aficionado article on why the world's best cigars use Connecticut tobacco wrapper leaves.

The technique of growing shade tobacco has changed little in the past hundred years. To form the shade tents, a tobacco field is set with posts in a grid layout. Wires are stretched from post to post, and a light, durable fabric (once cotton but now a synthetic fiber) is tied across them and draped along the sides. For example, twenty posts in four rows of five will create twelve square cells in three rows of four. Two guy-wires hold up Under the tents the sunlight is soft and diffused the air is humid and the ambient temperature is slightly warmer than outside. Filtering the sun produces a thinner and more elastic tobacco leaf that cures to a lighter, even color.

At its height, there was greater than 15,000 acres (61 km2) of tobacco being cultivated under shade in the Connecticut River valley. Currently, the amount of tobacco being grown in the valley is just over a steady 2,000 acres (8.1 km2). Approximately 34,000 acres (140 km²) of land in Connecticut is covered by Windsor Soil, named after the town.

The movie "Parrish", starring Troy Donoahue and Karl Malden, was set in the tobacco farms of Windsor, and filmed here in 1961.

While much of the Day Hill Road section of town has been given over to industry, the long red wooden sheds that are used to store and dry the tobacco are still noticeable. The Connecticut Valley Tobacco Museum containing authentic farming implements and tools can be found at Northwest Park located in Windsor.