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An Interview with Tropical Tobacco's Pedro Martín
Gordon Mott
From the Print Edition:
Orlando Hernandez, Mar/Apr 99
Pedro Martín, the founder and owner of Tropical Tobacco, began working in his father's cigar factory in the Cuban city of Cienfuegos in 1936, when he was 15 years old. But he had been in the family's tobacco fields from the age of seven, pulling weeds from among the plants. His family made the El Veguero brand for sale in the province and processed tobacco for the Havana factories, until they were forced off their land by the Cuban revolution.
Martín left Cuba in 1961 and went to work in Detroit for a U.S.-based cigar company, using his expertise with tobacco to become a blender and taster of cigars. After nearly a decade of working for others, Martín founded his own wholesale cigar tobacco leaf company, and then, in 1978, he started Tropical Tobacco. The company began with the Solo Aromas brand, then introduced such cigars as Particulares, Cacique and Maya. Later on, Tropical launched Don Juan, and then to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Columbus's discovery of America, it began making V Centennial cigars.
Martín admits that his company wasn't prepared for the huge boom in cigars that began in 1992. It wasn't until late 1996 that he was able to begin producing cigars in large enough quantities to meet market demand. Of course, by that time, the market peak had passed, and recently he has cut back some of his expansion plans. But in a recent interview with Gordon Mott, managing editor of Cigar Aficionado, Martín expressed his long-term commitment to the premium cigar business and his optimism about renewed growth in the marketplace in the near future.
Cigar Aficionado: Where did you settle after leaving Cuba, and why did you choose to go there?
Martín: When I left Cuba in 1961 with my family, I went straight to Detroit because I used to have a customer there, a cigar company. It was called DWG Cigar Corp. They were buying tobacco from me in Cuba, where I had been in the tobacco business for years. I went there looking for a job. They hired me as an assistant tobacco buyer and also to help out on the blending panel. I worked there for four years.
CA: What did you do there?
Martín: In the beginning, I worked in the office. My job was translating letters from suppliers all over the world who were trying to find replacements for Cuban tobacco in the cigars they exported to the United States. They wrote in Spanish and I translated the letter into English. The company wrote back in English, and I'd translate the letter into Spanish. The company also put a lot of cigars on my desk with numbers on them, and a comment sheet to tell everything I felt about the cigar that I was smoking. In the beginning I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I knew how to smoke a cigar. I was a smoker. And, I used to blend cigars in Cuba. But I didn't really know what to say about cigars, especially a short-filler cigar.
CA: Were these all short-filler cigars that you were tasting then?
Martín: In the beginning, yes.
CA: You were one of the original blind tasters.
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