A pilon (plural pilones) is the pile in which cured cigar tobacco is fermented. Workers tie the leaves into hands, or gavillas, and lay them flat, one on top of another, often after moistening them. The weight and moisture make the pile heat from the inside, and that heat drives fermentation.
Workers check the temperature at the center and take the pile apart when it reaches the factory's target, then rebuild it with the leaf rearranged so that every hand spends time in the hot core. Building the pile is called empilonando. Pilones range from short piles a few feet tall to stacks weighing thousands of pounds, and some factories call the larger piles of the second fermentation burros.