The industrial and commercial value ("usability") of the tobacco leaf is influenced by the stalk position. In Spain, Burley is the tobacco variety grown on the largest scale. All the producing countries redry the Burley leaf after the curing (Proctor system). The industrial transformation of the product is completed by a more or less prolonged aging. Spain is the only country in the world where Burley tobacco is submitted to an enzymatic fermentation with the same system as used for dark air-cured tobaccos. At the moment, the Spanish Tobacco Service is experimenting with the redrying of Burley. In this paper, the composition of the leaf and smoke of cigarettes manufactured with fermented Burley tobacco is investigated. Each sample comes from leaves corresponding to four stalk positions. Following analyses were carried out on the leaf : Total N, Soluble N, ammoniacal N, Nicotine, TVB, petroleum ether extracts, anions, cations, combustibility, filling power. Following analyses were carried out on the smoke : TPM (wet and dry), nicotine, tar, phenol, and acrolein. In a second part of this work we intend to analyse samples composed of halves of the leaves submitted to fermentation and corresponding other halves submitted to redrying only in order to obtain valuable information on the influences of the two treatments on the same Burley tobacco leaf.