- There's a story inside every smoke shop,
with every cigar, and with every person.
Come be a part of the cigar lifestyle of Boveda.
This is "Box Press."
(tranquil music)
Welcome to another episode of "Box Press."
I'm your host, Rob Gagner.
I'm live at PCA 2022,
and I finally get the opportunity to sit down
with Dion from Illusione.
Dion, thank you for sitting down with me.
If people don't know you,
which I would be hard pressed to say that they don't-
- Sure.
- You started in retail, you started to make cigars.
- Yep.
- But the cool thing about you is that your palate
is second to none.
- Oh.
- There's this crazy palate that you have,
and I've heard a story about it, and in fact,
a story about it has been dropped on "Box Press" before.
Did you watch the episode with Erik Espinosa?
- I did, and that's a true story.
So a lot of that was by happenstance.
A lot of that was by luck.
Look, let me qualify palate, okay?
So everybody inherently has good taste, right?
Everybody knows something that tastes really good.
You know, I've said it time and again,
I could put three bottles of wine out in front of you,
something that's really special
that I wanted to open up at a party, and then two others.
Invariably, you'll have guests come up
and sample or drink the wine, and they will gravitate
to that one special bottle that I put out.
So the question isn't of, you know, having good taste
or a good palate, or being able to discern,
you know, flavors and this or that, or whatever.
We all have that subconsciously in us.
So what I tried to do was, I said,
"Okay, well this tastes good.
Why does it taste good?"
And that's what really piqued my curiosity.
So I kind of started going through blends
and back engineering, if you will,
looking at blends.
And okay, so why do people gravitate to this blend?
Why do they like, "Oh, well, it's, you know,
Corojo type tobacco."
It has a little more sweetness to it,
it has a little more aromatics.
People tend to gravitate to sweeter things, I think,
goes all the way back to the caveman days
when caveman would pick a berry.
Sweet means safe, and bitter usually means bad
or poisonous or something, so it's something that has been-
- I didn't know that.
- Yeah, something that's kind of like-
- I didn't think about it that way.
- Yeah.
- So caveman, sweet, good, bitter, bad.
- Yeah.
- Could be poisonous.
- Could be poisonous, right?
So that's kind of the impetus of where,
you know, I think everything started
as far as me wanting and trying to learn about blending,
and also being around the right people at the right time.
I mean, a lot of it is just, you know, like you said before,
right place, right time.
And when I met Eduardo Fernandez,
when he had just recently purchased Tabacalera Tropical,
which was owned by, I believe, Pedro Martin at the time,
and he inherited all these beautiful fields and lands,
we had carried some of the tobaccos,
you know, in cigar form, you know, in my shop
way back in the day in college when I had worked part-time.
- You worked part-time as well in college?
- Yeah, worked part-time.
- So did I.
- Yeah, in a cigar store, so-
- It's a lot of fun.
- Pete Johnson actually introduced me.
I went on a trip to 8th Street in Miami
and hung out with him at the Miami factory at My Father,
and he introduced me to Paul Palmer,
which in turn introduced me to Eduardo Fernandez.
And he said, "Oh, well, you know,
why don't you come out to Nicaragua,
and check out, you know, our operations?"
So I did, and I sat down with him, and I said,
you know, "Paul, Eduardo,"
I go, "You guys have really, really unique tobaccos here."
And I said, "I know you guys have some,
you know, products in the market
that were brought along with the sale,"
but I said, "I really think that we can go
to the next level."
And I said, you know, kind of being a retailer
and having my pulse on what's going on out there,
I think we can really put something together
and make it successful in the market.
- Yeah, because you knew what people were smoking.
- Right, so the group of people
that he brought, you know, from Cuba
over there to oversee his farms,
Arsenio Ramos, Jacinto Iglesias, Chandito,
you know, to really oversee the fields
to get them where they needed to be,
because, you know, Eduardo back at the time
was really trying to wrap his head around tobacco,
and he really, really brought great minds
and great people in that knew exactly what to do.
So guys like Arsenio, they really were Criollo-centric,
and they really loved Criollo tobaccos.
And although it was a delicious tobacco to me,
it was kind of missing something, right?
So it was missing, like, almost like that sweetness
that we were talking about earlier.
So, you know, they were putting together some blends
and I was sitting there and I'm like,
"You know, these just kind of aren't jiving with me."
They were kind of like linear, one-dimensional.
And then I said, you know,
"Do we have any sweeter tobaccos at our disposal?"
They're like, "Well, yeah, you know, we have some tobacco
that we grew up in Jalapa, and it's Corojo tobacco,
but we really don't use a lot of it in our blends."
So we started incorporating some of those components
into the initial blends that we were putting together,
and then it just all clicked.
It was just beautiful.
- The Jalapa was the sweetness that you needed.
- Yeah, it really was.
And not that, you know, to say that you can't get sweetness
out of other tobaccos.
You can, but it was just this particular type
of upfront palate sweetness, and also in the olfactory
that just really brought everything in focus
and really brought everything together, so there's-
- So just a real quick question for me to understand,
you had the blend, and it was good.
I guess, I don't know how to really phrase it up
where it was like, you know,
like you had a base, you had a mid,
and then you had a high tone.
- Yes.
- Like music. - Yeah.
- And so what you were missing
is possibly like the high tone, like the sweetness.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Like this is, say, it represents the sweetness.
- Yeah, just to finish it off.
- Sort of make a better song.
- Yeah, right, the whipped cream-
- So you have like a good song.
- The whipped cream, the cherry on the sundae, right?
It's like, it's almost-
- It just rounded it all out.
- Exactly, and a good phrase I use all the time too
is, Michael Chiusano, way back in the day,
you know, you have peanut butter and jelly.
You can't eat a jelly sandwich by itself,
you can't eat a peanut butter sandwich by itself
because, you know, it dries out your mouth.
You gotta have, when you have peanut butter,
you gotta have the jelly.
- So that's what it was like,
it was like you had the peanut butter and no jelly.
- Right, exactly, and-
- So you had the jelly, now we're going.
- And the Corojo was the jelly,
so that's what brought it together.
I came out with initially six sizes,
which was Illusione Cigars,
and that's when my Corona Gorda got #7 Cigar
in the World in Cigar Aficionado.
So then they kind of, you know, looked at each other
and they're like, "Well, you know, maybe this gringo
knows what he's talking about."
I was kind of going out on a limb too, you know?
I mean, I'm like, well,
I brought what knowledge that I had.
In turn, I gleaned knowledge off them,
so it really became an exchange of information,
an exchange of knowledge.
I taught them-
- Everyone's working together for the same greater good.
- Yes, yeah, I brought them knowledge
from the frontend of the business,
they brought me knowledge
from the backend of the business.
- It's not Dion gets all the credit.
- Right.
- It's everybody working together.
- Right, and that's it-
- Put this cigar to the level that it needed to be at.
- Yeah, and it comes down to a team effort,
but really what what was great about that
was they pretty much, after then,
you know, they gave me carte blanche over the entire,
you know, operation and-
- You kind of proved yourself with the Cigar Aficionado.
- Yeah, so they just let me jump into it, you know?
And then-
- Why is it that Cigar Aficionado,
Top 25 is kind of that clout?
It gets you that clout.
Is it because it has just a broad audience,
then that actually validates that this is really good?
- You know, I'm not too sure.
I mean, it's that old adage,
you know, opinions are like, can I say assholes?
- Yeah. - Oh yeah.
Opinions are like assholes.
Everybody has one, right?
- But is it an opinion?
- It's a calculated opinion.
It's an educated opinion, and so-
- I think there's some rigor there
because like you're giving that cigar that you blended
to multiple people who know.
You could call them experts,
but let's just call them cigar smokers,
that could discern whether or not
this is a well blended cigar.
- Right.
- So if that's the case,
then did it really fall to an opinion
or did it fall to-
- Ultimately it fell on my shoulders, right?
Because I was the one smoking it,
I was the one that was, you know, doing it,
so really, it was on my shoulders
really to succeed or fail, what I was gonna do,
but it was the most, I think,
like, educated thing at the time that I could come up with
in order to say, "Okay, this has the best chance of survival
because we basically got all the components together
to make it successful."
- I guess I'm talking about Cigar Aficionado, like-
- Oh yeah.
- It's not an opinion by them because they took it
and measured it, so then once they release it,
they're trying to tell the audience like,
"Hey, this is worth your money."
- Correct.
- "This is worth your time.
This is worth your investment."
- Yeah, and by the same token,
they could say, "It's not worth your time
or not worth your money," which has,
you know, of course adverse effects as well, so-
- Well, there's always gonna be that,
but once we apply like the measurement or the criteria,
to have it sampled by a panel, then we're going,
"Okay, statistically, 80% of the people
are gonna like this cigar," right?
- Yeah, you could probably say-
- I know you can't say that 100%-
- Yeah, you could probably say that, but-
- But you're kind of doing that, right?
- Yeah, and nobody knows what they think.
Nobody knows what they're looking for.
- Eight out of 10 of the panelists were like,
"This is good."
Great, it landed on the Top 25,
so we know that the greater community is gonna love it.
- Yeah, I would hope so.
And you know, back then,
I mean, they had James Suckling on the palate,
you know, Dave Savona was back on that,
not palate, they were back
on the tasting panel, Greg Mottola.
- Do you know who's on the tasting panel?
- Yes.
- How many people are on the tasting panel?
- I think at any different time,
and, you know, don't quote me,
it can be anywhere from three to five people.
Even Marvin, I believe, still to this day
participates on the panel.
You know, I think mainly, and again, don't quote me on this,
it's just, you know, from what I've known over the years,
but, you know, Marvin really, really gets involved
in the horse race at the end of the year
for the Top 25 cigar, and he's a-
- Do you think the Top 25 is ever a bought position?
- No, I don't think so.
I mean, just, there's always gonna be that,
you know, conspiracy out there that it is bought.
You know, Marvin doesn't play that game.
I mean, Marvin is a self-made man.
Marvin is not beholden to anybody out there.
And it would just-
- Well said.
- It would ruin his credibility and his reputation
if he did that, and he is not a man that,
I don't think it's in his nature to do that.
You know, I don't know him personally.
I've spoken to him on a few occasions,
and I do know the people that are around him,
that know him intimately and they say the same thing,
so I have no reason to believe he is not that person
who they say he is.
- So it's not a bought position.
- No, absolutely not.
- It's all measured by quality.
- Yeah, quality, consistency-
- And then it's ranked.
And let's just call it what it is,
the ranking is subjective.
- Yes, it's subjective.
- You really can't say your cigar, what position did it get?
- The first year it got #7.
- So your cigar got #7,
so it's definitely better than #8.
You can't say that.
- Yeah, I mean, I think once you get into the Top 10,
I think they're all-
- It's real minor.
- Yeah, you're splitting hairs,
and then when you get into the Top 3,
then you're really splitting hairs.
- You're smoking some real good cigars, is what I'm saying.
- Right, yeah, and I've had Top 3 a couple of times,
as well too.
I've never cracked #2 or #1,
but I hope to one day, so.
- Top #3, baby.
- I'm working at it, I'm working on it.
- Is that one of your goals?
- I think it's everybody's goal in this industry.
I think everybody likes to be recognized for what they do.
I mean, we work really hard-
- Absolutely, affirmation's great.
- Yeah, I mean, we all like to pat each other on the back,
pat ourselves on the back, you know, job well done,
and it's just the fruits of our labor, you know?
It really is.
And some people get offended.
Look, everybody in this industry thinks
they make the number one cigar, me included, right?
But they're their own publication.
They have their own criteria, they have their own rules,
and it's dictated by their process
and what they do, so.
- Well said, and thank you for breaking it down
for some of the viewers out there
that just don't get the process and how it all plays out.
- Yeah.
- So now that you kind of are blending cigars
instead of selling them,
what trials or challenges did you have
that really helped you get into this blending process
a whole lot better?
- Well, those trials and those challenges still exist
to this very day, right?
- But they were new back then, so-
- They were new and they-
- They were like things that you were like,
"I gotta deal with this,"
and now you know how to deal with them,
so I'm asking how did you figure out how to deal with them
so that you knew how to get to the next level?
- You know, trial and error and just listening.
I mean, tobacco has a language and you have to listen to it,
and it'll generally tell you what it needs to do
and where it needs to go.
- What kind of language does it speak?
- Yeah, you know, it's kind of like-
- French, Italian?
- Yeah, I mean-
- Spanish?
- Music, jazz, it speaks classical.
- It's a feeling.
- It's a universal language,
tobacco to me, and once you start understanding it,
then you start understanding the complexities
and the intricacies of tobacco.
I mean, tobacco is very truthful.
It tells you exactly what it is when you taste it, you know?
So those-
- Does anything else act like that, too?
Or what are your-
- I don't know.
- Because that's a real powerful statement,
it tells you what it is right when you taste it.
- Yeah, I mean, I think you can say that with food, right?
I mean, we all know,
look, I can put maybe three different types of tomatoes
in front of you,
I can put a vine ripened tomato in front of you,
I can put a Roma tomato in front of you,
and I can put a heirloom tomato in front of you.
- All different.
- They all have a different language.
They all say something different,
and they're all utilized differently
within the context of a dish, and so I think you can-
- Okay, I get what you're saying now
because each tomato has a different flavor,
so then the chef, the blender gets to say,
"I wanna use this tomato
because it goes well with what I got cooking."
- Yeah, different texture, different flavor profile.
So yeah, I mean, yeah,
there's specific things for specific dishes
that you would use-
- Did you start recording then?
Did you have to write down
what each tomato was tasting like?
Or did you go ahead and just plug that up here?
- Yeah, so I pretty much have a talent
for useless information.
I'm able to, you know, maybe try something and file it away,
and then maybe like one or two years later,
I can bring it up and I'm like, "You know what?
That tastes exactly like what I smoked
when I smoked something," or taste something.
- That's impressive.
I have to write it down.
- Everybody can do it.
- And I can't remember the name.
- It's like, you know, your brain is a muscle.
If you just keep using it in a specific way
or a certain context, you can be able to pull things up.
I don't know.
- Yeah, if it's a muscle and you have to exercise it-
- Right.
- What's the Dion brain muscle exercise top three?
Top three things to do to exercise the brain by Dion?
- Well, from a tobacco standpoint, it's just repetition.
- No, general. - General?
- Just exercising the brain.
- Yeah, I don't know.
- What do you do on a daily basis to make it go?
- I don't, well, I guess,
you know, I guess-
- Like crossword puzzles?
- No, no, like golf maybe, I guess.
- Golf? For you it's golf?
- Yeah, golf is a series of repetitive exercises, right?
Trying to keep the swing on plane,
same swing as your eight iron,
your seven iron, your five iron,
and just trying to get everything to work together
all at once so that it's something repeatable, right?
And so when you're blending, you want to get to that point
to where each blend is repeatable, I think.
I don't know if that's the best analogy.
It's a pretty good analogy, but-
- I like it because there's a lot of variables
in a golf swing.
- There is.
- And so you gotta be able to control all the variables.
There's a lot of variables in a blend in a cigar.
- There are a ton of variables.
- So you gotta be able to control them all
so that you can hit the ball smoothly
so that that cigar comes out smooth.
- Right, and there are a ton of variables, you know,
in the blending process and in the fabrication process
on how you put them together,
the position of the leaves within the blend itself,
the types of tobaccos that are coming
from certain fields that you use.
Some years you may use a particular cutting
for a particular component in the blend.
The next year it might change
because of either soil content or water content
or sun content.
These are all variables that are just constantly
in a state of flux, and so what you ultimately have to do
is just rely on what the tobacco is telling you
in order to create a consistent flavor profile
and quality product, so.
- I like it.
So golfing can help you learn
how to taste cigars and blend cigars better.
- I don't know, it could.
- We're going out on a limb here.
- It could, but I doubt it.
I think it's just,
if you're looking at the mechanics of it, right,
something that's repeatable, yeah.
- You're just exercising the brain
to keep all those variables in line,
and learning how to pick up on variables,
that's all we're doing.
You gotta be cognitively aware.
- Sometimes you have to change your swing a little bit
because, you know, you might go sideways a little bit,
you might be a little wonky,
and sometimes it's just a little change.
You know, instead of holding your wrist one way,
you hold it another way, or the steepness of your swing.
You know, you might be getting too flat in your swing,
sometimes you might be getting a little too steep.
Same thing with tobacco.
Sometimes you gotta go up, sometimes you gotta go down,
sometimes you gotta go this way or that way,
but you have to be able to recognize what's wrong
and be able to correct it.
And a lot of times it's hard to recognize things
that you're doing that are wrong
because you think you're doing the same thing every time
when you're not, it's completely changed,
and that's what you really don't wanna get into with tobacco
because you think you're putting together
and doing the same thing, but it's coming out differently,
and you have to be able to recognize that
and be able to change it.
- That's where the brain muscle comes in play.
- Probably, yeah.
- You're exercising and trying-
- And the palate muscle.
- To stretch it so that it picks up on the variables.
- Yeah, the tongue, the palate muscle is a muscle too,
and you can stress out the tongue,
you can stress out the taste buds.
- Mine's a little stressed out.
- Yeah, and so when you're not,
maybe when you, you know,
when you go-
- I need some water. - Through a lot of tobaccos-
- I need like a lot of water right now.
- Yeah, a lot of water, replenishing the palate,
so you know, you have to be able to rely on your palate,
and once your palate is stressed out,
then you have to be able to switch
and rely on other parts of your sensory,
you know, like the olfactory,
like, you know, aroma, burn,
everything that goes into it.
So there's a lot of moving parts,
a lot of moving parts.
- This smells really good.
- Thank you, thank you.
- And it tastes really good,
but again, my palate's a little fatigued,
but I'm tasting that great balance.
Do you golf often?
- I do, I try to, I try-
- Like, give me the Dion schedule of golf for the week.
Is it two times a week or is it seven?
- It could be two times a week,
it could be six times a week.
It really just depends on my workload.
- Okay.
- So usually what I like to do is get into work early.
I get into work, I'm up about 5, 5:30,
and I get into work about seven in the summertime,
which will free me up in the afternoon to play.
Other times I'll play-
- Oh my God, that tastes really good-
- In the morning-
- After I cooled my palate.
Sorry. - Oh, no worries.
- Tastes really good.
The sweetness came in.
The cigar is now warming up and all those oils and sugars
are coming into my palate.
That was amazing.
- Thank you, thank you.
Yeah, we'll get to this in just a second.
This is actually a new project.
But anyways, to wrap up,
you know, what you were asking about,
you know, my schedule,
you know, I kind of base it around golf,
particularly in the summertime, but I don't let work suffer,
so either I can play in the morning or the afternoon,
or you know, I'll work in the afternoon,
play in the morning, or, you know, play in the afternoon,
work in the morning.
So in summertime, I try and play as much as I can
because in the wintertime we get a lot of snow
and I'm socked in, and I'm at work-
- You can't play in the wintertime?
- Then I'm at work six days a week, up to, yeah.
- You don't play in the winter as much, too cold?
- I do, I try, as long as there's no snow
on the golf course, or if we're traveling,
we'll go over the hill to, like, you know,
Sacramento and play, but-
- Dion, where do you live?
- I live in Reno, Nevada.
- Reno, Nevada, so it's warm all summer long.
- Yeah. - Or sorry-
- Right now it's about 100 degrees.
- Warm all year long, roughly, huh?
- Right now it's between 95 and 100 degrees in Reno.
- And in the winter, it drops down to the 60s?
- In the wintertime, it drops down,
it could be anywhere from about 18 degrees in the day
to about 45 degrees in the winter.
- Okay. - Yeah.
- That's a little chilly for golf.
- It's high desert.
We're about 5,500 feet up, so it's high desert,
really cold at night, really warm in the morning.
- Got it.
- Yeah, the differential between, you know, night and day,
I mean, it could be 85, 90 degrees in the day,
then it could be 55, 60 degrees at night, so.
- So you still get that, during the daylight hours,
you can still get a golf game in?
- Oh yeah.
- In the winter?
- Yeah, provided, if it's a warm day, the sun's out,
you know, you can get a 50, 45-50 degree day and it's good.
- In the winter, I live in Minnesota,
so in the wintertime everyone goes out to ice shacks
on a frozen lake to drop a line, a fishing line in a hole,
and try to pull a fish out of it.
It's some real good brain energy exercising stuff.
I'm actually being real sarcastic
because I think it's pretty low on the totem pole
of exercises to do for your brain.
- Sure.
- But it passes the time,
and winter's a long time in Minnesota.
- Yeah, winter's are, the older you get,
just the more, I think, mentally taxing
and physically taxing winters get, you know?
So that's why a lot of people
move to warmer climates, you know?
That's why people move to Florida, you know,
because they're just tired of putting up with the cold.
- Did you always live in Arizona?
Or sorry- - Nevada.
- Live in Nevada?
- No, I lived here, I grew up in Las Vegas.
- You grew up in Las Vegas?
- Yep.
- What is it like to grow up in Las Vegas?
The city that's kind of known for being 24/7,
a lot of stuff to do.
Did you feel it that it was real stimulating
or did you feel like it was kind of boring growing up here?
- Oh, I think it was just like anybody growing up
in any city.
I mean, there's a community around the strip,
which largely, they don't visit, you know,
unless they come to like a nice dinner or show-
- The locals don't visit the strip.
- Rarely, rarely, yeah.
- Yeah, this is touristy stuff.
- Yeah, so I mean, other than, you know, when we were kids
coming down here for a buffet,
you know, like Friday night buffet or-
- Yeah, gotta eat, go to the cheap buffet.
- Yeah, and then, you know, there was a time
when we'd ride our BMX bikes down here
and jump our bikes into the Caesar's Palace fountains
and cool off.
- Did you BMX a lot?
- Yeah, in the desert, yeah.
I was a desert rat.
- Were you? - Yeah.
- Like how many of you are out on your BMX bikes?
Like two or three guys?
Or you'd get like a whole posse of like 15?
- Nah, nah, we didn't have a gang.
I mean, we weren't in a gang of BMX bikes,
but you know, there were like about
three, four, or five of us I think at any given time.
- I remember when I got my first Dino bike,
and I remember just wanting to put pegs on it
so I could stand on the back and ride around.
- Yeah, do pop a wheelies.
- Yeah, and think I'm super cool.
- Right.
- Definitely wasn't, the knobby tires didn't help
with the balance,
and ultimately, I never went anywhere in BMX,
but for you guys,
you were probably more extreme, jumping-
- Yeah, jumping-
- Doing some dangerous stuff.
- Riding around in the deserts on trails.
I mean, we grew up on the outskirts of Las Vegas,
or what we would consider to be the outskirts of Las Vegas.
Now it's, you know, houses go all the way up to Red Rock,
and, you know, you're pretty much in this valley.
Everything is going up to the edges of the valley.
I mean, we grew up out in the desert, I mean-
- So the bike, as a kid, is the first vehicle
that actually can get you away from the house.
- That was our freedom.
You know, it's like everybody,
you know, everybody when you're a kid,
when you get your bike and, you know,
you're not just relegated to your neighborhood
or your area, your block,
you know, it's like that sense of freedom.
It's, like, why I think why so many people ride motorcycles.
You're out, you know, you're by yourself.
It's like that truest sense of freedom.
- What is it about that freedom that makes it so addicting?
- I don't know, you're gonna have to talk to those-
- How about for you?
- I don't know.
I mean because, I obviously I don't ride,
you know, BMX bikes anymore, but, you know,
you talk to guys that ride motorcycles,
particularly, you know, my brother Dominic,
you know, he builds bikes.
He's a fabricator, you know, that's his hobby,
so he's actually a fire inspector here in Las Vegas now.
He was a firefighter for years
and now he works for the city, you know, Clark County,
but he still builds bikes.
I mean, he just sent me another picture of his bike today,
this bike he's working on.
You know, he builds them and he sells them,
and it's pretty cool, so-
- That's awesome.
- Yeah, you'd probably have to ask him about that,
but I mean, like the truest essence of like that freedom,
you'd probably have to talk to a guy
that's an avid motorcycle rider.
I'm not a motorcycle rider.
I did it a little bit, a tiny bit when I was younger,
but not to the degree that, you know, my brother,
any of these guys that are in Harley culture, you know, are.
- Sounds like you got some creative genes in the family.
So your brother's a bike builder, motorcycle builder,
you're a cigar builder.
Are there other builders in the family
or creative outlets that you recognize?
- No, I think we were it.
- How many siblings do you have?
- I think we were the ones.
- Just one, just a brother. - Just a brother.
- Yeah, he's two years younger.
- How about your parents?
Are they creative beings as well?
- Not really, no, uh-huh.
- What'd they do for a living?
- So my dad was a operating engineer.
He ran heavy equipment here in Las Vegas.
Built a lot of things.
- He helped build Las Vegas.
- He did, he really did.
I mean, he laid a lot of the foundations for UNLV
when he worked for the companies that he did.
I think one of the last things that he did
right before he retired was he laid the grade
for the racetrack that's out here.
There's like an Indy 500 racetrack out here
or something like that.
Yeah, so he's the one that set that grade
for the racetrack before he retired.
That was years ago.
- Cool, again, another builder,
kind of creative in a different way.
- Yeah, yeah, just, he moved dirt, you know,
so that was his thing, that was his canvas.
- Right, that's his canvas.
His medium is dirt and is canvas is the land.
- Right.
- Very cool, I can see all the creativity
kind of coming through.
What about your mom?
- Yeah, so my mom started,
you know, when we were younger,
she was in the food service industry.
She really took care of us for most of our life.
She was like a stay-at-home mom.
Then as we got older,
you know, she got little jobs here or there,
and then she went to work as a bookkeeper
for a credit collection agency company,
one of the oldest ones in the United States,
and she grew up through the ranks
and she wound up owning it.
She owned the entire credit collection agency,
and, you know, retired from that, sold it off,
and so she's really where I got my business sense from,
or you know, like, for lack of better words, my math skill,
she really kind of got me in line and said,
you know, "Dion, you really have to pay attention
to the reporting side of it,
your reports, your income, your expenses."
And I'm like, "Oh, okay."
You know, and so that's what you got me into, you know,
your PnLs, everything that goes with business,
you know, inventory levels,
profit margins, everything, so she's really good at that.
- That's awesome, so that makes you a little bit better
at running a cigar shop.
- Yeah, it's-
- And starting your own cigar line.
- Yeah, it was kind of her passion.
It's not necessarily my passion.
You know, like, the backend, the details,
the backend part of the business like that, you know,
this is obviously where my passion lies, right.
- Creating, blending, creating, that's your passion.
- Correct.
- Got it.
What did you blend and create that we're smoking today?
Becuse now I'm into it, and I've had a good chance
to kind of taste a lot of the flavors
that are coming out of this.
- So this right here is part of the Original Documents line.
So Original Documents, Illusione Original Documents,
which is actually on the table here,
there's a couple of things, one, we kind of reimagined
and redesigned the packaging for Illusione Cigars,
not so far outside to where it's like completely different,
but just wanted to get out of the shadows a little bit.
Still staying on brand
and still staying on topic
with, you know, what it is that put us here,
you know, a little bit on the conspiracy side,
a little bit on the, you know, brand imagery.
So the Original Documents here,
streamlined packaging, sizing,
all the blends still remain the same,
all the sizes are still included.
We have just included a brand like Ultra,
which is now part of the Original Documents,
and this one here.
So this one is a Habano.
- I love Habanos.
- Illusione Habano line,
and this actually came about
with a guy I've been friends with for years,
as everybody has been
in this industry, AJ Fernandez.
So he, you know, was like, "Dion, you know,
when are you gonna come make a cigar with me?
When are you gonna come make a cigar?"
And I'm like, "Well, you know,
I'm really dedicated and really tied
to where I'm at right now with Eduardo and his tobaccos."
And he's like, "Well, you know, just come over,
and, you know, check it out, see what you think,"
you know, not from nothing, and so I did,
and over the years, I'd worked with a particular person
by the name of Alberto Padilla,
which oversaw a lot of the fermentation
over at Eduardo's operation.
And about five years ago,
he decided to go to another job,
take, you know, for whatever reason.
- Yeah, moving on.
- And he went to work for AJ as AJ opened a new factory,
so this was a nice opportunity for him
to step up, little more responsibility,
you know, a better position, what have you,
in another organization.
And Alberto was a guy
that I worked with side-by-side
for years at the factory,
at Eduardo's factory in Nicaragua,
and he was the one, again, you know,
so as tobaccos came from Jalapa Estelí,
the first thing that I do when I go to Nicaragua
is I review the raw materials.
I smoke the raw materials.
And so he says, "Dion, you know, I want you to take a look
at these pilónes.
We just got these in from Jalapa,
you know, they're coming along nicely.
I want you to smoke them."
So he was very knowledgeable with my tobaccos,
you know, going back to the original group of people,
you know, that worked with Eduardo Fernandez,
and many still do to this day,
but again, he had intimate knowledge
of what I was looking for and what I liked,
so that kind of clicked with me.
So as we sat down and we started talking
about the olden days and blending with Arsenio Ramos,
you know, God rest his soul,
which passed away a few years back,
it really kind of got my creative juices flowing again
because, again, he had that knowledge,
has that knowledge still to this day of what I look for
when it comes to raw materials or tobacco.
So I said, "You know what?
Okay, let's smoke some tobaccos."
You know, "Let's see what you got."
And you know, we came up with a blend
and this is the Habano, and you know,
AJ grows wonderful tobaccos,
many of which I really do not still understand,
but with Alberto's expertise and knowing it,
you know, kind of like in the beginning with Eduardo,
you know, led me through and he's like,
"You know, I know you're gonna like this tobacco
because this reminds me of things
that we did back in the day."
So we came up with this, and this is a Habano line.
It's a truest, I think, expression
of a Nicaraguan Habano blend that we can do.
I just didn't wanna slap a Habano wrapper on it
and call it Habano because that can be a bit misleading,
and a bit untruthful.
So all the tobaccos that we put in combined with this,
I think really is the true representation
of what a Nicaragua Habano cigar can be
when it comes out of Nicaragua.
- The sweetness.
- Yeah, sweetness, aromatic, it's mild spices.
It doesn't overwhelm the palate,
and it falls right in line
with Illusione Cigars and Illusione Original Documents.
So this would not come to fruition
had not, all these components were in place
and this level of trust that I had
with Alberto Padilla in the past.
- So much of, like, really good things,
really luxurious things or really high-end things,
things that just have, that grab your attention,
take whoever made them
or whomever made them, multiples,
it takes for them, those people that are the creators,
to have a lot of trust in each other.
- And it's an expression of our souls.
It's an expression of our creativity and what we do.
You know, we want to make good things.
We want to make luxurious things
because it's, you know, it's what you deserve
in this industry, you know?
And it's what our enthusiasts,
our cigar enthusiasts deserve-
- It's what the people want.
- Exactly, that's my focus is to make cigars
that can be enjoyed universally.
- I love that.
- Yeah, thank you.
- I love that.
- And still not get away from,
you know, the focus of what I wanna do personally.
- Right, absolutely.
- So these will be out next year,
along with the refresh of the Illusione brands,
and we're starting to go through and rebrand
or reimagine a lot of our current brands
within the Illusione portfolio.
Another one we did was the Singulare right here.
So a Singulare was originally my limited-edition cigar
that I would release every year.
So when August 8, 2015, came around,
when the FDA, you know, decided to,
you know, quote, unquote, "Regulate" us
or begin the process, I wanted to make sure
that I had all those sizes in those blends
into the market before that date elapsed,
so I released all of my Singulare limited-editions
into the market to have those to use for later.
So as years went by,
you know, the hardest thing to do is maintain consistency,
and some of these tobaccos that I used
for my limited-edition were very unique,
they were very special,
and you can have little amounts of them,
or you can have large amounts of them.
So it can be almost chaotic
to have eight different sizes in eight different blends,
you know, sizes or whatever in one thing
and maintain that consistency,
so what I did was I took the spirit
and the essence of one blend that I had
within the Singulare releases that I made,
a, what's called, Singulare Origin line.
It's four sizes, a 5x52, 6 3/4x48,
a 6x56, and a 6 3/4x,
5 5/8s by 46 was the fourth.
So four sizes encompassing everything
that was great about the Singulare blend.
Now what I can do is I can go on later
and release all those great limited-editions
to fortify and to compliment this Singulare Origin blend,
which is now a core line.
Did a little bit of imagery,
brand imagery and repackaging.
There's an owl on there that you can see,
and this is the owl of Ramses.
Ramses II had a pet owl.
And the fable, or the lore behind that was,
you know, he's holding his owl one day,
and then the owl slapped him in the face with his wing
and then he was banished or punished.
So you know, again, keeping in line with the icons
and the brand imagery fits perfectly into Illusione Cigars,
you know, with a little bit of Egyptian theme,
but not quite on the nose, you know,
not, you know, King Tut,
you know, things like that.
So it has a little bit of that in there,
but it has really incorporated the soul
of Illusione as well.
- Love that.
Dion, if somebody was, like me,
struggling with being able to taste flavors
that are coming out of a cigar,
do you think it's important to be able to say,
"This tastes like the sweetness?"
- Yeah.
- Well, what type of sweetness?
Is that important or is it not?
- You know, I mean it is, but it isn't.
I mean, people know what they like,
again, they just don't know why they like it.
They like it because it's sweet,
they like it because it's peppery,
they like it because it's spicy,
but it's the word association game, right?
So like when you hear,
or when you read articles or reviews about wine,
you know, you get blueberries or cranberry,
or essence of, you know, forest floor,
or ship's hull, or anxiety, whatever,
whatever adjective that they want to describe,
you know, what it is.
And again, it's all just a frame of reference
to bring you into what that particular wine
or that cigar is trying to express.
So you know, there are certain components in cigars
that do mimic certain flavors.
Now, you know, if you say that something,
"Oh wow, I get a real hint of dark chocolate,"
it doesn't taste exactly like dark chocolate,
but you know, you can take a puff of a cigar
and go like that, and then maybe two or three seconds later
it's like, "Oh wow, that tasted exactly
like that Illy espresso that I had the other day.
It has that same type of earthy coffee characteristic
that I had."
So it's kind of like associating,
you know, one with another,
and it's all very, you know, subjective,
but it's all very subconscious too,
and you're kind of like tying things together,
and just associating things.
So, you know, maybe some things can,
you know, you could taste black cherries
in a particular blend, or you could taste cocoa,
or you can taste Christmas spices,
you know, something that tastes like a,
you know, so I've had, sometimes I've had a cigar
that kind of tastes like,
you know, like fruitcake.
You know, it's got those Christmas spices in there,
so does it taste exactly like fruitcake?
No, but it kind of, the essence of it sometimes reminds you
of like that fruitcake that you had,
or like that cup of coffee that you had,
or, you know, whatever it is, it's just association,
and I think that's where really people kind of get into it.
- I just had an epiphany.
- Yeah.
- So instead of me worrying about I taste sweetness,
what type, I think I'm just like okay with
I taste sweetness and I like it.
- Yeah, exactly. - It's blended well.
- And that's it.
- I don't need to go to the next level in order to enjoy it.
- You don't have to get mired down in all of that.
- Because sometimes that prevents you
from really just enjoying it.
- Exactly, and yeah, that's it,
because once you, you know, you go down the rabbit hole,
especially as a blender, then you're-
- You're working hard to get there.
- Then you start getting into, "Oh, I gotta change this,
I gotta change that."
Sometimes you just have to let it speak
and let it just become what it is.
And you know what to change, what not to change.
If it's too bitter, then there's ways you can fix it.
If it's too sweet, then there's ways you can fix that.
If it's too spicy, you could fix it.
If it's too salty, you can fix it.
So other than that,
I mean, going down the rabbit hole,
those are for the people that do reviews.
It can be for me sometimes too,
but sometimes I just gotta let it go
because if I don't let it go,
then nothing will ever get made.
- Right, well, and I think it's important to understand
that it's just an expression
to try to get you the consumer to possibly say,
"Yeah, I'd like to pick that up and enjoy that."
- Yeah, you wanna make a connection.
You wanna make that emotional connection
or that physical connection, that taste sensation,
you know, with it.
You know, maybe it comes to how you sell something,
maybe it comes to however you market anything,
but, you know, it's all relative.
- I think that's a wrap.
I had a great time sitting here
talking to you, and understanding.
I kind of call this golfing with Dion.
I just went out and had like a golf.
- You played 18 holes with Dion.
- I played 18 holes with Dion
and I enjoyed every minute of it.
- And you had a cigar.
- Every hole, every stroke,
and then on top of it, traveling to the ball,
riding alongside with you inside the cart
was just a true honor.
- Aw, thank you.
- Again, the top three people
that I've always wanted to sit down with,
and you're one of them.
- Thank you.
- So thank you for sitting down with me.
- That's very kind of you to say.
- That's another episode of "Box Press,"
Golfing with Dion is a blast.
Check out Epernay,
or sorry, check out the Epernay, because that's my favorite,
but check out Illusione Cigars.
(tranquil music)