- What is it today at PCA 2024

that's animating your spirit?

- That's a good question.

I'll be completely frank with you.

My professional life,

or let's say, the glasses I see through

typically reflect my state of mind

at a particular time in life.

We go through life as children

growing up into teenagers,

growing up into young adults,

then some growing into

parents, young parents,

so on and so forth.

And the way we see things

dramatically change with life.

It's a gift.

It's a natural process.

It's an enormous responsibility,

and it's an even bigger privilege.

And so I think much of this

is brought into the arts,

which we're creating,

an enormous part of this

is brought into the arts,

which we're creating.

Now, the art which we're creating

has several facets to it.

Part of it is history,

knowledge, experience,

how you build a cigar,

how you grow tobacco.

And this is an amassment.

Is that a word in English?

An amassment.

Amassing something.

- It will be from this point forward.

- Yeah, from that one.

- Yeah, we will adopt

that word, an amassment.

- How to bring together the combination of

years and generations and centuries

of knowledge and experience

and bring it into a product.

Another facet of that is the lens

through which you're seeing

something at a particular moment

and the way that you're

projecting it into the future.

Because the future,

even though you have

a past attached to it,

also has an independence.

Some people call it free will,

other people call it whatever they may.

But the reality is the

human being has the capacity

to separate itself from the

rest of the animal kingdom

because of some kind of particle from God,

which gives it the ability

to get off the roads of what's known

into something completely different.

And I think that answers your question.

The way I see things today,

in this particular moment of my life,

is based on where I

stand in my personal life

as a father, as a husband, as a patriarch.

Unfortunately, not having a

father and a mother anymore,

not having grandparents anymore,

being the eldest of a family,

being the patriarch of a company,

very fragile and very sensitive situation

to be in, obviously.

But it also brings you a

certain type of responsibility

and a certain type of commitment

to sustaining values,

to sustaining respect.

And that's where I am in my life today.

Yesterday I was speaking

to somebody on the floor.

They asked me, "If you

had to in one sentence,

explain the frame of mind of the cigars

or the frame of mind of

the way you process things

right now in terms of tobacco,

what would that be?"

And today, it would be respect.

The word that I'm clinging onto right now,

and for the past year

or two for the moment,

and which I'm very, very

adamant on, is respect.

Because I believe at this stage of my life

that there are so many things

that are encapsulated in that,

which leads to happiness,

which leads to liberty,

which leads to peace,

which leads to serenity.

And that's the frame of mind

that I'm looking for right now.

- Well, it seems to be the

frame of mind that you're in.

It just feels that way to

meet you and to listen to you.

And I love the word amassment,

and I'm serious if it isn't a word,

we're going to make it a word.

- We're gonna have to look

that one up in the dictionary.

So whoever's watching this,

please pull out your phones,

Google amassment, and

if something comes out,

send me an Instagram message or something.

- We'll have our staff look

it up while we're talking.

But if it's not a word,

we're gonna make it a word.

But to aggregate all the

things you talked about,

the frame of reference

you are elucidating,

I think you are intentionally,

and that's a great word,

intentionally it feels

like you're in that.

And the word that is on the

front of my mind about it

is serenity.

There's a serenity about being on purpose

and being in alignment with your values

and being, projecting from your heart

into not just some academic exercise

and how to make spectacular cigars.

I mean, there's nobody in the room

that's gonna argue with the fact that

it's a premier storied

tradition of cigar excellence

that you've been a part of,

and that you continue to.

- I'm a happy person.

The work we've done over the

last, let's say my career,

which is basically 25 years, let's say,

20 years of leading and

running the family business,

and then maybe five, 10 years

of actively working within

the business before that,

I'm happy. I'm content.

What we've managed to

build with our partners

is magnificent.

Today, I see, for example,

one of the main brands

that we've been developing

in the eastern hemisphere of the world,

which is Arturo Fuente,

one of my father's

very, very best friend Carlito Fuente.

And the amount of satisfaction I get

from understanding and seeing

the combination of 20 or

30 years of development,

of education to the market,

and seeing the satisfaction

in the eyes of the consumers.

You need to remember that we

were doing this in Europe,

in Asia, in the Middle East,

where 15, 20 years ago, nobody, nobody

would smoke a premium cigar

if it wasn't a Cuban cigar.

Nobody.

And that was quite interesting because

you came with a different

offering to the table.

As good as it may be,

it was considered a lesser product

by consumers, which had been,

I don't wanna use the word indoctrinated,

but let's say they were used to

consuming a certain type of product,

and they were having a hard

time considering something else.

Same thing happened in the

wine industry, by the way.

I remember as a small child,

there would only be Bordeaux on the table.

And even if we pulled

out the best Burgundies,

sometimes it was challenging,

yet alone, Spanish wines,

yet alone, Italian wines.

And my goodness, if anybody

ever spoke about American wines,

and here we are-

- Sacrilege.

- Sacrilege.

And here we are 20 years

later, 30 years later,

and you know, California's

are definitely part of the most

prestigious offerings there are.

Italy has some of the most

elegant wines in the world.

Spain has some of the most

delicious wines in the world.

So the cigar industry

followed the same trajectory.

And being part of that change,

being an engine of that change

was very, very difficult.

And today, I can sit back,

I'm very, very upset and very sad

that my father's not next to me,

to be able to sit back and see

the fruits of the work that's been put in,

sit next to his friend

Carlito and puff on cigars,

and kind of look back and say,

"You know, we did it."

And not in terms of the business,

but in terms of changing

the entire mentality

of three generations of cigar

smokers at the same time.

That is an unbelievable achievement.

And something which we're

absolutely proud of.

And you need to realize that in 1964,

when we started importing

non-Cuban cigars in Europe,

because we happened to

be the distributors of

many Cuban cigars in Europe,

my grandfather launched Cohiba

in the European markets.

We were very involved in Cuba.

My grandfather was best

friends with Che Guevara

before the revolution,

and he was the largest exporter

of Cuban tobacco in history.

We had a huge role to play in Cuba.

But to see that he brought in cigars

from the Dominican Republic

and later from Nicaragua

and through him and my father,

and then later on, my brother and myself,

created a change in the industry

in terms of the consumers,

in terms of what was accepted.

That's an enormous satisfaction.

And I'm sitting here at the PCA in 2024,

and I've spent the whole morning

with international distributors,

people from all walks of life

in every place in the most

remote places in the world.

People from Australia.

I mean, this is the

other side of the planet.

And these great cigars

are now being appreciated

at their just value.

They're being appreciated

at the level which they

should be appreciated.

Don't be surprised that I use

the word content or satisfied.

It's an enormous satisfaction

to see this happening.

That's on one side.

On the other side, I've

been developing cigars

over the last 20 years,

but putting them onto market,

and I see what it does to people.

I see how much satisfaction

it brings people.

I see how much curiosity people have.

I see how much love, how much affection

and friendship that creates.

And there's nothing to say.

Nothing to say.

When you are able to create emotion,

when you're able to

create the human links,

I call them the golden links

between human beings, between people.

There's no money in the world

that comes close to the

satisfaction of what that brings.

And I've been blessed, I've

been blessed to feel this.

I've been blessed to be part of this.

I've been blessed to be living this.

And content is what it does.

- Well, in a sense,

well, as I'm listening,

there's two extremes,

one is isolation and one is connection.

And I think

I'd be interested to hear

what you think about this.

I think you've been

involved in an industry

that has a privilege of creating

connections between people.

- I believe that the world at any level

is a series of contractions and dilations,

contractions and dilations.

I think that you don't have a connection

without having the isolation as well.

And these are cycles that

one has to go through

to be able, well,

- It's natural.

- It's a natural cycle.

You need to go into an isolation

to be able to create certain things.

It's not possible to create a cigar

without a certain amount of isolation,

whether it's in your thought process,

whether it's in the static, in

the noise, which is going on.

And so I think they're

related, to be honest with you.

Nothing is complete without

the cycle of both of them

happening together.

- So you mentioned your father

and you talk about missing him.

How long has he been gone?

- My father passed away 20 years ago.

- 20?

- Yeah. Mine, 1992.

And how different is that craft today

than it was when he was

in the center of it?

- I think he would've been very proud of

the direction the industry has taken,

some of the industry,

some of the industry.

I believe that he would agree that

the industry has never been better

in terms of what it's capable of

delivering to the consumers.

The quality of the cigars today

is at a level which I've never seen it.

And I think that's spectacular.

A lot of people speak about

the old days, the nostalgia.

"Oh, Cuban in the 1930s, 1950s, 1960s.

Yes, the, 1980s, 1990s.

Those cigars are gone

and will never be back."

I completely disagree.

You know, I still have vaults of cigars

from the 1930s, 40s, 50s,

60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s.

And I'll be honest with you,

when I look at the quality

of what's coming outta

the factories today,

the good factories,

what Fuente is producing today,

I don't think anything ever came close.

I'll be honest with you.

Where I'm very worried

and where I'm strongly opinionated

is on industry becoming too

big, tobacco becoming a problem,

people cutting corners

because you have these

explosions in demands

in the business.

And this is a very, very big problem,

which I'm very worried about.

Same thing happened during the boom.

I mean, now it's disastrous.

Last year, for example,

there was no tobacco,

very little tobacco coming out of Ecuador

because of environmental.

Indonesia's gone,

the Connecticut shade from

the valley has disappeared,

Sumatra, Indonesia has disappeared.

The old style Cuban

wrapper has disappeared.

Cameroon's one of the

only, if not the only

of the old style

wrappers, which our family

and our partners are keeping

alive by the thread of it.

But this is very, very scary.

And so basically what you end

up with, is you end up with

a lot of manufacturers using

a lot of the same tobacco.

This is very, very, very dangerous.

And this is something where

I definitely yell and scream all the time,

and people know me by it

and I'm very opinionated.

Beware about the tobacco,

be very, very aware.

Another thing I'm very worried about is

this whole story with ring gauges.

The way I've seen the industry

go in the last few years

with the bigger and bigger ring gauges,

I'm against it.

I think it's not natural.

I think that nature produces

tobacco in a certain way,

in a certain form, in a certain size.

I think that the balance of

cigar up to a certain ring gauge

is God's particle.

It's natural, it's how it should be.

The balance of the tastes

are at a perfection

for a reason.

Once you start wanting

more and more and more,

you start genetically modifying

seed to get bigger plants,

to be able to roll bigger ring gauges.

And I believe that you're

losing a lot of the elegance.

You're losing a lot of the

balance in the product.

And I think that it was

done for the wrong reasons.

You know, wrapper is the most

expensive leaf of a cigar

by far.

By a multiple of many,

many, many, many, many.

It would make sense that

certain manufacturers would

promote bigger ring gauges,

because you blow up the amount of binder,

sorry, the amount of filler

that you have in a cigar,

the wrapper becomes less importance.

But this is not what is

creating the balance.

There's a reason why, for example,

typically, you take a Fuente, for example,

typically, you are in very

traditional ring gauges.

There's a reason for this.

Carlito being one of the

master blenders of the world.

There's no question about it.

There's a reason people like this don't go

crazy in the ring gauges.

There's a reason why

in the Meerapfel cigar,

the biggest ring gauge I have is a 52.

And that's by far the biggest.

You know, I have 50s, I

have 48s, I have smaller,

in today's world, smaller ring gauges,

because I don't believe

that you can create balance,

I don't believe it.

And so this is another one of my,

where I'm very verbal about it,

is the whole swing in the ring gauges.

Now, saying that there are exceptions,

there are people out there

that have managed to create

relatively balanced and decent cigars

in the big ring gauges,

but in my humble opinion,

it has certainly not been the majority.

- Yeah, I've always,

and I'm a relative novice at cigars

compared to the experience

that the people I've had a

chance to speak to in this forum.

- And I'm sorry to interrupt.

- Go ahead.

- I don't make cigars to sell them.

I never have, never will.

My point is not whether

I'm doing something to

please the consumer,

because he's asking,

if I don't believe in

it, I will not do it.

End of story.

And that's very, very important.

It pleases some and it upsets

others, but it's who I am.

And you are gonna get who I am,

and I am gonna be what you are gonna get.

It's as simple as that.

And therefore, what we

create, what I create

is what I believe in, what

I strongly believe in.

And some people believe that

I'm opinionated and hardheaded.

I don't see why they would

ever believe such a thing.

But the point is, that's

what it's gonna be.

It's not made to appeal to the masses,

it's made to appeal to those

who agree with my palate.

- Well, and it's arguable

that there's probably only

10 or 15% of cigar smokers

that'll ever have an opportunity

to smoke a Meerapfel cigar.

- Why is that?

- They're just not,

I don't see them everywhere mass produced.

- Let me tell you

something, my dear friend.

Six years ago, when we were getting ready,

because I started

developing this product 20,

when father passed away.

Six years ago,

we had the financial

department of the company

gather around the table

and they said, "Okay, how are

we gonna price this cigar?"

You know, these are the

oldest tobaccos on the planet

on a production cigar by a mile.

These stocks are,

you can't put a value on on this.

How can you put a value on something

which is 20 years old, 25 years old?

You know, some people

make small batch runs.

This is on a production cigar.

The closest thing to this

is going to Christie's or Sotheby's

and buying a cigar on auction, okay?

So there, ah, we're gonna,

and I said, listen, it's very simple.

I wanna price the cigar as

low as we can possibly go.

I don't know if it was $50, $60.

I don't know exactly what it was.

They said, "You're out of your mind."

The cost to keep this

tobacco for 20, 25, 30 years.

You know, we cannot do this.

And my answer was,

"We are gonna produce cigars

to an offer experience."

And I do not wanna cater

for the half a millionth

of a percent of the world

who could afford to pay $1,000

or $2,000, $3,000 for a cigar.

That doesn't make any sense.

There is no reason

that someone who can save

up a bit of his money,

instead of buying five cigars

at $10 or six cigars at $10.

If once a year he could

save up a little bit

and have the experience of

enjoying Meerapfel cigar,

I wanna be able to offer that to him.

So forget your craziness as

of what the tobacco is worth,

or what's the cigar is worth.

It's all about offering the experience

and that's what I want to do.

And it created mayhem and the

company, but we stuck with it,

and we went with it, and

they respected my will.

And that's what we're doing.

- And it works.

- That's besides the point.

The point is, anybody in the world can,

well, anybody in the world,

all things being equal

can go out if you can find it.

That's the only problem.

- That's the the point I was making.

- The only problem is if you can find it,

because there's 613 boxes of each SKU,

there's only X number of SKUs.

There's only whatever hundred

retailers in the world

that have been selected that,

you know, we can't do more.

It's, you know.

- Being that small of a production,

do you find there are individuals that

traditionally come back again and again

and hoard that product?

- We try that it doesn't happen.

Because it's all about giving

a special experience to somebody.

We try for it not to happen.

We're trying to,

we're trying to get away from,

for example, what happened

to Pagani or Bugatti

or to Patek Philippe.

We're trying to get away from that.

Where the guys who buy a Patek,

you know, they're big accounts.

Whatever comes into the stores,

they collect, they put

away, and that's it.

They're the Patek buyers.

Or the guy who buys the

Pagani or the Bugatti,

he's first on the list to be able to buy

the next Pagani that comes out.

And sure, the cigar is definitely

in the same philosophy.

It appeals to the same kind of,

but we're trying to get away from that.

We want everybody to be

able to experience it.

And I think it's important.

And that's why we priced it.

I mean, it's funny, I'm

gonna say priced it so low,

and some people were like, oh

my God, it's crazy expensive.

And of course, it's a lot of money.

But in terms of how we see it,

and in terms of the value of

the tobaccos and everything,

we kinda say we priced it so low that

as many people as possible could access it

and could be able to have that experience.

And that's important for us.

- We gathered to remember a friend

that had passed away about a year ago,

a gentleman, 55 years

old, lover of cigars,

a close friend of Vartan

[Shahverdian] out in Arizona,

who I'm sure you know.

He had a collection of cigars

and his pinnacle of his collection

are all the Meerapfels.

And all the other cigars

were liquidated in the

process of these friends.

And then the crown

jewel of the collection,

the crown jewels of

the collection was this

pretty massive collection of your cigars.

It was his idea of the

quintessential cigar experience.

He just loved your cigars

and

calmly, peacefully, cooperatively,

a group of about eight or nine gentlemen

figured out a way to share these cigars

and compensate the estate

for them and so forth.

Just spectacular to watch a

sense of reverence to an art.

I mean, it's a very special experience

to enjoy one of your cigars.

- We've been blessed.

Joshua [Meerapfel] and

I, we've been blessed.

We grew up with the finest

cigar makers in the world

as mentors.

And these fine gentlemen

not only make the best

cigars in the world,

they also select the finest

tobaccos in the world,

which some of it came from

our fathers and grandfathers.

And if we're able to add

a stone to the edifice

and be parts

of a world which,

let's face it,

being part of something

which is part of us,

that's what we all aspire to.

My father left way too early.

I understand yours did as well.

- He was 79. I'm the younger.

- It's still way too early.

- Anytime is early.

- You aspire to making

fatherly figures proud.

I was a very young man

when he passed away.

Very, very young man.

And the closest thing to my father was

the mentors I had around me,

the Carlito Fuentes,

the Edgar Cullmans,

my grandfather, of course,

that was still alive.

And so I spent many, many years

and in a way still today,

try to make my mentors proud

because I believe that it's this search

of making our mentors proud,

that rewards us with elevating ourselves,

striving for being a better

person and doing better things

and being more successful in what we do,

not in terms of monetizing it,

in terms of improving our arts.

And I think that was the

biggest privilege in my life,

is being able to try to follow

the footsteps of these giants

that definitely inspired me,

and still today, push me to

try to become a better person

and perform whatever it is that I'm doing

in a more adequate way.

They're never happy.

My father was never happy.

My grandfather certainly was never happy.

Carlito's never happy with me.

But I think that's the whole point.

And I think you only understand

that very late in life.

You understand that's what,

and I see your eyes.

- Oh, totally.

- I see your understanding that.

- Litto made the point yesterday.

Litto Gomez made the point.

He pointed at me,

we were having the conversation,

he pointed at me and he said,

"We're close in the same generation."

He said, "Our fathers didn't tell us

that they loved us every day.

Our fathers showed us in their actions

and in their comportment, the

way they handled themselves,

the example that they gave."

He makes this point.

And I thought, you know,

that's spectacular.

I can count the times my dad

said, "I love you" on one hand,

but he said, on numerous occasions,

"either I'm not happy with

this or I'm proud of you."

The last words he said to

me was, "I'm proud of you."

- That's actually the last words

my father said to me as well.

- Hmm.

- Sometimes you wonder if

they know what's gonna happen.

And it's the final gift

that they give us as sons.

This industry is the most

wonderful and beautiful thing.

The consumers are very fortunate

that they can experience

it through the products

and through gatherings,

through the accessibility.

What's one of the only industries

I've ever witnessed where

a consumer and a manufacturer

would spend time together.

You would typically not see

somebody walking around

with a Louis Vuitton bag

having a conversation

with Bernard Arnault.

You would typically not see

somebody driving a Ferrari,

sitting down with a CEO of Fiat

or the Scuderia Ferrari.

The cigar industry is all about

love and respect and connection.

And that's why you have

gentlemen like yourself

and like Carlito [Fuente]

and Jorge [Padrón] and

Litto [Gomez] and myself,

and all of the people around you today

that are so excited to come here.

They're so excited to come here.

Why am I so excited to come here?

Because I get to sit with our consumers.

I get to sit with my consumers

and share a cigar with them

and listen to them

and hug them and give them a kiss.

What other industry in the world

would the CEO or the president

or the owner of a company

get so excited to sit

down with his customers?

This is the best industry in the world.

- It's been a real blessing for me.

I mean,

the gentleman that I've met,

the families that I've met,

it's just been remarkable.

And the inclusiveness and the brotherhood

and just the consideration

that people show each other,

it's unusual.

You're very correct in that.

It's not like anything

else I've ever experienced.

- There's not very many

industries like this.

You have intergenerational businesses,

which is becoming very rare.

And around this floor here

you have businesses which are

30 years old, 50 years old,

a 100 years old, 120 years old.

Our family's been in the

business for 400 and some years.

Where in the world do you find this?

Where in the world do people

dive and lose everything

and decide, you know what?

this is exactly where I want to be

and I'm gonna rebuild it from the ashes.

Happened to us.

Close to every generation

for the past 400 years.

What are the probabilities

of something like this?

Many people don't know.

We were pirates in the 1600s.

The name Meerapfel comes from

an old named Aramean name Araphel.

Araphel means smoke.

We're trading tobacco from

Spain to the new world.

It means smoke.

They were Jewish pirates in the 1600s

that were trading across the Atlantic.

Then they had to,

there was the,

what do you call them in Spain,

had to get away in the early

1700s, arrived to Germany

to a village called Meckelfeld.

And like many families,

they arrived to Germany,

they Germanize the name.

Araphel became a Meerapfel.

What does meer mean?

Meer means the sea in German.

So they went from smoke to Meerapfel.

Apfel is an apple, the

sea apple, Meerapfel.

This is crazy history.

It's insane history.

Where do you find something like this?

- It's wonderful.

- And who in their right mind

would keep a name like Meerapfel.

Nobody can pronounce it.

It's wonderful.

People usually would change

it to something like Smith

or Jones or, I don't know.

- Yeah, they do a rebranding.

- A rebranding of it.

But excuse my French, fuck it.

This is who we always

were, this is who we are.

You know what, if you can't

pronounce it, forget about it.

- Do your best.

- It doesn't matter.

It's not what it's about.

It's not what it's about.

And with that family heritage

and that family tradition,

there's no surprise

that things are what they are today.

- Yeah.

- There's no surprise that

you have all of these wonderful people

on the shop floor today.

I mean, right around you,

who do you have here?

You have Oliva.

- Yeah.

- And some of the Olivas

are still circulating there.

You have Fred [Vandermarliere],

which has also been in

the business for ages.

You have Carlito [Fuente],

which is right there.

And you have Rocky [Patel],

which is over there.

And you have Litto [Gomez],

which is over there.

And you have, these are

all family businesses

and they're all there

and they're all happy to be here.

Don't be surprised.

There's a reason why

when you smoke a cigar,

there's so much pleasure involved.

And I can tell you something,

it's more than just the cigar.

- Hmm.

- There's some fairy dust

in here, I can tell you.

And that's all the love and the passion

of all these guys in the industry

which care so, so very much.

- So having no understanding

of any of the tradition

or any of the families.

I'm in a cigar store, I'm

with a group of people.

We're smoking cigars, we may

be playing cards together.

We're having a good time.

Without knowing,

we get a taste of all that you

describe, all this tradition.

- Of course.

Why do you get so emotional

when you smoke a cigar?

- Do you get so emotional

when you eat a piece of bacon?

- No.

- Alright, so why?

- It's a great question.

- You get emotional when you drink a Coke?

- Not at all.

You get emotional when

you bite into a tomato?

- It'd have to be a really good tomato.

- Because the person who did it then

is putting a lot of love into his tomato.

- Yeah, the love comes out.

I think it's because

of the love comes out.

- Of course.

It's what I call the fairy dust.

The guy who's making it,

the guy who's behind it,

there's a piece of him, the fairy dust,

there's something going on.

- Well, it's certainly a privilege

to share some fairy dust with you.

- It's my privilege.

- I could talk to you all afternoon.

I could care less if we break

now or if we keep going.

But I don't want to impose.

What a privilege.

- It's my privilege.

And I have to say that

and I said it once, I said it twice.

And actually, the proof's in the pudding.

There's a reason I put Boveda

to take care of my cigars.

There's a reason for that.

- What is that?

- It works.

- Simple.

- You know what the product is.

You know how fragile Cameroon is.

You need a hell of a system

to keep this thing protected.

You don't have a choice.

If you wanna smoke it at this

level, it has to be perfect.

- Love those Cameroons.

- Thank you. So do I.

- Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you very much.