Great Stories About Great Cigarmakers!

There are some great stories that have gone untold in the cigar industry and I guess it’s up to me to write about them at some point, but each of them deserves more than just a passing mention. No one else seems to be interested in the real guys in the industry, just the guys with made up histories and made-up stories about their “limited edition” cigars. The “real” guys who pioneered the industry were more interested in UNLIMITED EDITIONS!

So, just to give you a taste of the real story behind a few of these guys… did you know that:

Juan Bermejo was the actual guy that stole seed out of Cuba at the time of the embargo and worked with Anhil Oliva to establish the first crops of Cuban seed tobacco outside of Cuba. He later ran the Joya de Nicaragua factory for Anastasio Somoza until the revolution when he had to hightail it out of there, lost his home and everything he owned and ended up working in a graveyard in Miami till Frank Llaneza located him and put him in charge of the NATSA factory (now known as NACSA) in Esteli, Nicaragua, which for years was the largest volume factory in the country.

Now, this is gonna sound unbelievable, but years ago when I still had a full head of hair, I hopped in a taxicab to go uptown to my fathers United Cigar Store and on the dashboard was this… I guess you’d call it a taxi-driver license—and I saw the name: Ramon Cifuentes. I said to the taxi driver “Hey, did you know that your name is the same as the most famous cigarmaker in the world: Ramon Cifuentes, the maker of Partagas!”

And, HOLY SH*T… IT WAS HIM! He went on to explain in somewhat broken English that he was that Ramon Cifuentes and that he had escaped the island with nothing and was now here in New York driving a taxi, and his wife was working in a department store (I think it was Bloomingdales). I gave him a two-hundred-dollar tip, which was all the money I had on me at the time, and a few years later when he was working for the Cullman family he repaid me by making the Crème de Jamaica brand for me.

I’m sure you all know about the Fuente Cigar company, but it wasn’t all wine and roses for the Fuente’s for many years, and poor Carlos Sr. had plenty of problems on a personal level to deal with way back then, while also being close to dead broke. Years ago, Fuente cigars were mainly sold in Bodegas, and Carlos Sr. had a distributor called C.S.& J cigars in the Bronx that went belly up on him, and Carlos was desperate to get his remaining stock out of there. So, me and my friend Mark Goldman bought all the cigars and bailed Carlos out, but just to illustrate how tight money was for the Fuentes back then, at one point I actually had to loan Carlos a hundred bucks to pay his bill so he could get out of the Edison hotel which was just a block from our store! I had never mentioned this to anyone, but about a year later Jorge Ortiz, a Mexican cigar manufacturer asked me a question: “Lew, I’ve never mentioned this to anyone, but Carlos Fuente borrowed a hundred dollars from me last year and although I’ve seen him since then, he hasn’t offered to pay me back… should I say something to him?”

There are similar stories about Simon Camacho, the Padron brothers, and others I’ve known or run across during my lifetime in this wonderful industry and I’ll tell you about them individually when the mood strikes! It’s been an interesting life and I’ve met so many interesting people—all joined by the one common thread: cigars.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Smoke Inn, its employees, or its affiliates.