5月6日，一场强烈而持久的冰雹袭击了富恩特公司位于多米尼加共和国的农田。冰雹从天而降，将还没有收获的烟叶砸穿，摧毁了烟叶田里的粗棉布帐篷，还砸坏了烟叶仓和烟叶幼苗床。热带地区居然搞的像下了大雪，冰雹之后，农场的工人们开始铲除那些覆盖在倒塌的帐篷上的一堆堆冰块。

遭到冰雹袭击的这块烟叶田大概有45英亩，风暴摧毁了大部分烟草植株。破损的烟叶无法再作为茄衣使用，风暴之后，烟叶田到处都是压碎的烟草植株，烟叶上布满了洞孔，看起来像是有人用猎枪射击烟叶似的。幸运的是，另外120英亩的烟叶种植的较早，烟叶已经采摘完了，没有遭受损失。

富恩特公司的老板小卡洛斯·富恩特告诉记者，“我们损失比较大，风暴持续了一个多小时，非常奇怪，出现了前所未有的积冰。”

富恩特城堡是一个农场，富恩特家族在这里种植烟叶，作为巨著X系列产品的茄衣烟叶，巨著X可是世界上最热门的非古雪茄品牌之一。富恩特说这块45英亩的烟叶田有90%的烟草植株遭到破坏。这块田地在风暴发生前曾经采摘过一次。大多数烟叶都是分阶段采摘的，一组有三个工人，从植株的底部到顶部，持续几周时间。

除了烟草植株，富恩特农场的一些基础设施也受到破坏。粗棉布的帐篷，电线杆，烟叶仓库，发酵房，防止动物进入的围栏设施等。

虽然损失比较严重，但是不是历史上受灾最严重的一次。虽然是一个事故，但不至于是世界末日。富恩特告诉记者，1998年的乔治飓风当时把农场的发酵仓库扫荡一空，以至于富恩特公司暂停了巨著X产品的生产，包括陈年茄的生产。

风暴发生之前，天气都非常好，原本这是丰收的一年，这个阶段已经是烟草生长的最后阶段了。

恰巧的是，风暴发生那一天，是小卡洛斯的父亲的忌日，老卡洛斯·富恩特在2016年的5月6日去世。

附参考文章：

An intense and long-lived hailstorm destroyed several acres of cigar tobacco at Chateau de la Fuente in El Caribe, Dominican Republic on May 6. Ice fell from the sky, blasting holes in unpicked tobacco leaves, tearing down cheesecloth shade, damaging curing barns and wrecking seedbeds. In the aftermath, it appeared as if snow had fallen in the tropics, with workers chipping away at piles of ice that had gathered on the collapsed tenting that normally covers the fields. 

The storm destroyed much of a 45-acre tobacco crop that was ready for harvest. Wrapper tobacco needs to be pristine, so any damage makes it unusable as cover leaf. Video from the storm’s aftermath shows crushed plants and leaves that were peppered with holes from the hail, making it look as if someone had blasted the tobacco with a shotgun. About another 120 acres worth of tobacco grown earlier in the season had already been picked, and was not damaged by the storm.

“We got hit pretty hard,” Carlos Fuente Jr. told Cigar Aficionado. “It was the strangest thing.” He said the storm lasted for more than a hour, and one of his workers told him that there was an “accumulation of ice never before seen in the region.”

Chateau de la Fuente is a farm where Fuente grows all of its wrapper leaf for the Fuente Fuente OpusX brand, one of the hottest cigar brands in the world. Fuente said that about 90 percent of the 45 acres of tobacco in the ground at the time of the storm had been destroyed or damaged. One priming from that field had already been taken. (Most cigar tobacco is harvested in stages, called primings, where workers remove leaves in groups of three, working from the bottom of the plant to the top, over a period of weeks.) 

In addition to all the tobacco, some of Fuente’s infrastructure was also destroyed: cheesecloth shade, poles, wires, even some damage to curing barns, warehouses and animal pens. “We’ve got damage to everything,” he said.

As bad as this was, it’s not as bad as other storms that have hit the farm. “It’s a bad thing, but it’s not the end of the world,” Fuente said. Hurricane Georges wiped the farm clean of its curing barns in 1998, resulting in Fuente temporarily halting production of OpusX (and the creation of Añejo.) Fuente said this storm won’t affect this year’s shipments, but he will cut back somewhat next year, to plan for future shortages with the smaller-than-expected harvest.

Prior to this hail storm, the weather had been superb for Fuente’s harvest. “This was the very end of the crop. This was a very good year,” he said.

Fuente was particularly shocked at the date the storm occurred, which happened to be the birthday of his father, Carlos Fuente Sr., who died in 2016.