Nick Melillo Foundation Cigars Episode 4

Episode Summary

Master blender Nick Melillo, founder of Foundation Cigar Company, sits down with hosts Mike Szczepankevic (Cigar Hustler, Deltona, FL) and Mike Palmer (Florida Cigar Club) for a wide-ranging conversation about his path from a Connecticut tobacconist counter to one of the most respected blending palates in the industry. The trio smoke Foundation's Menelik event cigar (4.5x52 soft box press with a San Andrés wrapper and Corojo Jalapa binder), the Apollo — a limited Ecuadorian Connecticut with Pennsylvania binder made at Nica Sueño — and the big-ring Wise Man Maduro, with Nick breaking down each blend's tobaccos.

Nick traces his start in 1996 running The Calabash Shop in Connecticut for owners Carol Velarde and Mary Russo, growing up around a Connecticut broadleaf–smoking grandfather and a pipe-smoking grandfather, and studying international business at Quinnipiac. He recounts working for the Vatican during the 2000 Jubilee, backpacking around the world on a $1,500 ticket, and the one-line email from Jonathan Drew ("Call me") that landed him in Nicaragua in March 2003, working out of the back of Nick Perdomo's old factory — then being left in charge almost immediately.

The heart of the episode is the Drew Estate build-out: roughly a million unsmokable, plugged cigars made before his arrival, and how Nick responded by building quality control teams at the bunching stage rather than only at the end of the line, skepticism toward draw testers, training an entire workforce, and taking production from 5,000 to 105,000 cigars a day with a rejection rate of only 2.2–2.5%. He also talks about learning Spanish from Italian, being one of the only gringos in the north of Nicaragua in 2003, and the cultural work of getting people comfortable reporting problems.

Side projects come up too: Hotel Puro Estelí, the Jamaikia organic clothing line with Foundation art director Alex Garcia ("Thief Operandi"), and an executive producer credit on Stuart Davis's Sex, God and Rock 'n' Roll. Nick then tells the full origin story of Highclere Castle Cigars — how Onyx Moonshine's Adam von Gutkin connected him to Lord Carnarvon, the archive documents (including the cigar smoked to celebrate the discovery of King Tut's tomb), and the blend itself: Ecuadorian Connecticut shade over a Brazilian Mata Fina binder with Ometepe, Estelí (Corojo/Criollo cross from Finca Soledad), Condega and Jalapa fillers. He explains why he has "factories within factories" with partners like Tabacalera AJ Fernandez and Eduardo Fernández's operation instead of owning his own — for now — and closes with the show's three questions, naming the Padrón 1964 Anniversary Exclusivo Maduro and a 1996 Puros Indios No. 2 by Rolando Reyes Sr. among his all-time favorites.

In This Episode

1. 01
   Smoking the Menelik, Apollo and Wise Man Maduro
   Nick breaks down the wrappers, binders and fillers in three Foundation blends on the table, including the Menelik event-only cigar.
2. 02
   Connecticut roots and The Calabash Shop
   Growing up around broadleaf cigars and pipe tobacco in New Haven, then running a legendary Connecticut shop starting in 1996.
3. 03
   Vatican, backpacking and the email from Jonathan Drew
   From working the 2000 Jubilee in Rome to an around-the-world ticket and the one-sentence email that sent him to Nicaragua.
4. 04
   Arriving at Drew Estate in 2003
   Working out of the back of Nick Perdomo's old factory, being left in charge, and learning Spanish on the fly in Estelí.
5. 05
   A million plugged cigars and building quality control
   How a catastrophic batch of unsmokable cigars shaped Nick's QC philosophy, from bunching-stage inspection to a 2.2–2.5% rejection rate at 105,000 sticks a day.
6. 06
   Hotel Puro Estelí, Jamaikia clothing and side projects
   Nick's life outside cigars, including a hotel in northern Nicaragua and an organic clothing line with artist Alex Garcia.
7. 07
   The Highclere Castle Cigar story
   How Adam von Gutkin and Lord Carnarvon led to a Connecticut shade blend inspired by the castle's archives and the King Tut celebration cigar.
8. 08
   Factories within factories and the three questions
   Why Nick works with partner factories instead of owning one yet, plus his picks: Padrón 1964 Exclusivo Maduro and a 1996 Puros Indios No. 2.

Brands & Cigars Discussed

Linked items are in our shop. Mentions without a link aren’t currently stocked or couldn’t be matched with confidence.

Transcript

Every day I'm hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin Hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', hustlin', every day, um, every day, um, every day, um, ho, love. Welcome to Cigar Hustlers Podcast with your host, Mike Szczepankevic from Cigar Hustler in Deltona, Florida, and me, I'm Mike Palmer from Florida Cigar Club. Sit back, light up your cigar, everybody get ready, let's get hustlin'. Hi, I'm Mike.

And I'm Mike also. And this is a Cigar Hustlers Podcast. Today, we have the super special, most amazing man, Mr. Nick Millillo.

Great to be here, nice pronunciation. Hey Nick, what's going on, brother? Together, you guys are Mike Squared. Mike Squared, M2.

M to the dose power. M to the dose. So, Nick obviously owns Foundation Cigar Company, if you haven't heard of him before. And if you're new to the cigar industry and you found this podcast, kudos to you.

If you are a little more involved in the industry, you know who Nick is. Nick is one of the greatest blenders, I think, of our generation. And I'll tell you a quick story about Nick before he's ready to go. I was going to say that was flattering.

My head's getting big. That's nice. Everybody says that in the beginning, but not so much at the end. They're like, "Hey, fuck you, man.

This is the worst fucking podcast I've ever been on. " So, Nick walks into the shop and he's like, "Hey man, I smell parique" or something like that? " I thought he was smelling paprika. He smells a tobacco smell, like a pipe tobacco, something that's really aromatic.

Well, on Saturday, now today's Monday when we did this recording, on Saturday there was somebody in the shop smoking pipe tobacco. So, Nick could fucking smell the pipe tobacco. I was getting whiffs of it. Perique is actually not an aromatic as much, but there was something going on over there.

Which is pretty crazy. So, I mean, that kind of segues into a question: as far as public bathrooms are concerned, do you try and stay out of that? Because, I mean, what the hell does it smell like for you when you walk in? It's funny, because I'm very, very particular about public bathrooms.

I was thinking about an app where you could, and somebody already came up with one, I think, where you could find the best public bathrooms. Oh, yeah, there's one that rates the bathrooms. Yeah, and you can rate them because, yeah, I have to... Very aromatic.

Unless it's, you know, top-end, I gotta be in the comfort of my own abode. I hear you. I hear you. But hey, you know, life of a road warrior, sometimes that's unavoidable.

You know, they use me as a canine sometimes. I love tobacco, man, so whenever I smell, you know, I just grew up surrounded by it, so, you know, and pipes, so one of my grandfathers, big pipe smoker, so I was, you know, grew up with pipe tobacco, and the other grandfather was a big Connecticut broadleaf cigar smoker, so, you know, congratulations, guys, on your place here, it's looking sharp. Yeah, a little, you know, a little cleanup, making it a nice, nice and respectable. Loving it, loving it.

What the, so, we're all kind of smoking shit at random. You're going to have to explain what I'm smoking, because I know you said to me what it was before, but what is it exactly? So it's called the Menelik. Menelik means actually the son of the wise man.

He was the son of Solomon in the story of Solomon and Sheba. Okay. So I wanted to create a special cigar when I go and do events, I don't do many events, but, you know, those for purchase in boxes at events that I'm doing, I wanted to make a special blend for them. So it's a four and a half by 52 soft box press, has a little pigtail there I call the man bun, San Andreas Mexican wrapper, Corojo Jalapa from the north of Nicaragua binder, And then it's got some pretty heavy filler tobaccos from Esteli, Condega, and Jalapa.

Well, it's pretty tasty, that's for sure. So it's, you know, it's rich, you've got that body, the strength. Very nice. Hopefully it's not too overwhelming.

I don't think so. You're hardcore, so you can handle it. We're part of the not-fucking-around crew, so, you know, that's all good. That's a good crew.

So you're smoking... Apollo, man. I was impressed by this. Thanks, man.

I made a limited cigar back in the day when my second son was about to be born, and I named it Apollo Danny. It's an Ecuador and Connecticut with a Pennsylvania binder, and then some Nika, and a little more Pennsylvania in the interior as well. Really well-balanced. Thanks.

Good strength, creamy, smooth. I enjoyed it very much. Doesn't smell like a bathroom? Doesn't smell like a bathroom, which is key.

It's always a plus. So yeah, that was made out of the Nikasueño factory with the, you know, my Roma fam, obviously, but I think, you know, a lot of that credit goes to them, right? So, I just had the thought. I hear they got a great tobacco guy in that factory.

Yeah, they got, you know, they have two actually great tobacco guys in that factory, but yeah. Yeah, which ones? Well, Esteban, obviously, and Skip. It's a dangerous duo.

It's a dangerous duo. They're like a tag team. They're like a tag team. And what are you smoking, Mr.

Michael? Yeah, I'm smoking the Wise Man Maduro. Ooh, and it's a big one. It's a big one.

You know, it's a 56 soft box press. I'm not personally a bigger ring gauge guy, but I had to do it for the big ring gauge guys. It's very good. Yeah.

All right, so this podcast is obviously more about, not so much about the cigar as it is the person in the cigar industry and how you kind of came to be who you are and, you know, your journey and where you kind of envision yourself. So if you don't mind, sir, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started before. Man, that's a loaded question, dude. I know.

Don't look at my notes. Well, try not to cheat. Don't look at those chill prep. You know, I guess I started in the industry in 1996, running a cigar shop in Connecticut called the Calabash Shop.

I worked for two amazing women in the industry, Carol Velarde and Mary Russo. Their husbands had actually started the shop in the '70s, and then one was a roofer, one was a teacher, so leading up they were doing both and the ladies were helping run the store. As they came to the end of the '80s, it kind of became too much for, you know, the guys to really do both. And they were about to get rid of the store, and the lady said, you know, we're already running it, pretty much, we'll take it over.

They took it over, and then the '90s hit, and the cigar boom hit, so they just started killing it. And largest pipe selection in Connecticut, I mean, incredible pipe selection. Um, my grandfather had, had gotten many of a pipe there and, uh, pipe tobacco bar, walk-in humidor, you know, they had a lot of great relationships with, uh, suppliers. So I used to go in there with my brother and we had just gotten really into cigars.

Of course, you know, my, my grandfather smoking Connecticut Broadleaf cigars, you know, it was just a kind of a staple in New Haven. And then there was a ton of cigar factories, so kind of like, you know, grew up knowing about the cigar history in Connecticut and Connecticut wrappers, you know, if you know cigars, you know, Connecticut is a big name. And yeah, man, so just... So that's where you started?

I started, that's where I started. Is the shop still there today? It's not, they sold actually in 2004, 2004, 2005, and then a couple other people bought it after that, and unfortunately, you know, they didn't do too well, they didn't really know the business, and, you know, some people get kind of fooled in this industry, as you guys know, you know, that people think everybody's just hanging out smoking cigars all day, and there's not, you know, although that's a great part of it, but, you know, as you're They're brothers out there doing numbers, and, you know, there's so much to it, and I think people get a little bit fooled. Right.

It looks a lot easier than it is. It does, it does, and I wasn't in a position to purchase, I really wanted to purchase it, but I just wasn't in the position at the time, and so it was kind of tough, because that place, it was amazing. You know, I really started to learn the industry. They put their full confidence in my palate and my love for cigars.

So they put me in charge. They weren't huge cigar smokers, you know, although they would smoke, you know, now and then. But they knew, you know, my love for cigars. So they put me in charge of the humidor right away and bringing on new product.

And so they became like my second mom. So both of them. Yeah. Yeah.

They were just. Yeah, pretty much, pretty much, you know, they were just awesome. They just supported me and, you know, gave me my first start in the industry, so. That's awesome.

That's great. You know, without them, I probably wouldn't be here. So, you were there until about the year 2000, correct? Yeah, so 2000 and then I came back in '01 again, so I graduated school.

So when I started working in the shop, I started studying international business It's at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, which is a smaller kind of private university. My mother worked there at the university, so I got a great deal on tuition, thank God, thanks to her. So whenever I wasn't in class, I was running the store and I was studying international business. I knew, you know, I didn't really know exactly what I wanted to study, but international business caught me because I knew I wanted to travel.

You know, growing up pretty small, small town in Connecticut, you know, I traveled, probably the first time I traveled when I was like 13, 14, I went to Italy on a family trip, and that's just sort of opened my, my world to realizing. Had to be a great trip at that age. It was awesome. It was awesome because my father had forced me to take Latin in high school, which sucked.

Nice. It did. I took that in high school, too. Dude, I mean, initially, it sucked.

It was like, you know, I wanted to take Spanish, and, you know, there was a big push from grandparents, parents to be a lawyer, you know, the lawyer or doctor. I couldn't see you as an attorney, just for the record. You know, I can make a good argument. Ladies and gentlemen, the jury.

Yeah, no, and that just wasn't for me. Who was smoking earlier, because I'm getting a little whiff of, yeah. You know, one of the greatest stories I heard about an attorney cigar smoking, sorry for the tangent, but as an attorney, he used to put a metal rod when you could smoke in courtrooms through a Churchill, and when the other lawyer was making his closing argument, he would light the cigar, and the ash would just become so long that the jury was so focused on the ash falling that they would not pay attention. They're all just fascinated, waiting on it to fall off.

Yeah, he was known for that, but I just knew I wanted to travel and, excuse me, you know, and I just love cigars, so I was just following my passion at that point, and so once I graduated, you know, I had saved up my money, wasn't a huge partier during school, didn't waste my money, saved it up and knew I wanted to travel, so 2000, I moved to Italy. Oh, no shit. Yeah, 2000, summer 2000, and I started working for the Vatican, actually, doing some work. That year was what they call the Jubilee, so there was millions of pilgrims descending upon Rome.

Excuse me. And, you know, I ended up working for the Vatican doing that, and then I ended up working for what they call a Mensa in Italy, In Italy, which was a soup kitchen, but also a place where it would help people get on their feet, and get jobs, so it was to help people to integrate into society, so yeah, so I did that, and then backpacked around Europe, I did the whole Euro rail tour. That's pretty cool. And I did it before the Euro, so I got to do it pretty cheap.

That's cool. That's great. Yeah, which was awesome. A lot of people in the cigar industry were tour guides of the Vatican City, so, I mean, that's, that's pretty, uh, did you, did you meet the Pope when you were working for the Vatican?

You know, I didn't meet him face-to-face, but we were actually this close, uh, John Paul, yeah, yeah, I got to meet some pretty big wigs over there, yeah, interesting, all right, so you got, like, so you have like a two or three year, I mean, sabbatical for the most point, and then you kind of get back You went back into the tobacco industry around 2003, right? Correct, yeah. So I ended up going back to work on my master's degree. Okay.

Then I was working in the store again. And about a year doing my master's degree, I got a job offer from a place called Italian Passage. It was an art renaissance history tour for high school kids. It was a college-level program run by this girl from Dartmouth who had studied Renaissance art history.

" And then I said, I can't go back to school after this, and I bought an around-the-world ticket for $1,500, so after the job ended, it was pretty much from May to September, and I bought an around-the-world ticket from, I ended up traveling from Italy to Paris, actually lived in a Buddhist community outside of Bordeaux, and a vineyard for a while, and then traveled from Paris to Mumbai, India. I was in India for a while, then Bangkok, Thailand, then traveled overland because the ticket, depending on where you scheduled the departures from, it would change the cost of the ticket. So my ticket went from Bangkok and then the next flight was out of Beijing and China. If I added a city, it changed the whole structure of the pricing, so I had to travel overland from Bangkok to Beijing.

So I traveled to the south of Thailand, then to the north, was in the jungle for a while, went down the Mekong River for two days into Laos, Laos into Vietnam, took a bus from... That's some crazy shit. Crazy, yeah. And then from Hanoi, I landed in Hanoi after a crazy bus ride where we got sold to another bus at the border of Vietnam.

We started the trip in a beautiful, you know, beautiful, like, tour bus, you know, it was gorgeous, we were singing "We Are The World", the guy was playing "We Are The World", he was playing Michael Jackson, it was unbelievable, you get to the border, the Vietnam border was crazy, it was foggy, you couldn't see, you know, 100 feet in front of you, once we got across the border, they sold us to a tiny van, we were all, like, sardines in a can. No kidding. And you couldn't pass it up. You don't want to get stuck there at the border.

We had no choice. Yeah, no choice. We had no choice. And I have some funny pictures from the bus of just people sleeping on, you know, my shoulder, and it was crazy.

And then we get dropped off in the outside of Hanoi, thinking we were going to be dropped off inside the city. We're like 45 minutes outside, so then we had to find our way into the center of Hanoi. I get there, and I see signs all around the center of Hanoi of a fist cracking B-2 bombers that say USA, and I can just see, read 30, that's all it said, and I realized it was the 30th anniversary of what they called the American War, and I was like, oh my god, what the hell is going on? What a bad day to show up.

And I felt like it was the Twilight Zone because everybody was so nice, but they're mainly young people, you know what I mean, that, but people were so nice and had a, you know, good experience there. Crossing the street was in fucking sanity. You know, I had little old ladies that were dragging me across the street because you just go, you have tons of traffic, just how you cross the street is you just go. Oh, man.

Like, there's no lights, there's no nothing, you just have to go. You just gotta go. And I couldn't, it was just so unnatural. It was so funny, you got this little lady holding, like, you know, things on her shoulder, she grabs me and just, if you hesitate, that's when you get hit.

That's when you get hit, right. So, that was crazy. So, you know, along this trip, Jonathan Drew was on my email list. Okay.

So that, you know, I didn't realize it at the time, but I was traveling through all these crazy places, John was in some serious problems with quality control back then and issues, and he was traveling a lot promoting the company and all this. So I think the light went off. If this guy's coming out of the jungles of Thailand, you know, I would come out of the jungles of Thailand and find an internet cafe and send, you know, like a mass email to people that wanted to know about my travels. And John was on the list, so it sort of...

So he said, if this guy's coming out of there... So I came to... I got to Japan after Beijing. I was in Osaka and Japan, and I got a one-sentence email from John that said, "Call me.

" That was it. That was it. That was the email. So I called him up.

"Yeah, what's up, man? " And he's, you know, going off, and I had been planning my next trip was to rent a bike and travel through Central America. Because my dream was to learn how to roll and bunch cigars. Like that was like the next step for me.

I had actually been on a trip in 2001 to the Camacho tour at that time. That was like one of the first trips where people actually would take trips down to central cigar factories. Pre-cigar safari days. Correct, yeah.

And that trip was Christian. He had people over to his house and similar, you know. Right. So the real...

At that time he had a monkey down there, so it was like a safari. A monkey? " He wanted me to come down and check it out, so I actually flew back to San Francisco in February 2003. I landed in San Francisco the day before the Iraq war protests.

There was like 200,000 people in the street. So I land and then that was my, you know, intro back into the States. And all I was trying to do was find a bookstore to find a book about Nicaragua. Because I knew, you know, I knew some things about Nicaragua, but you know, now I'm potentially going to live here.

And there was no Lonely Planets, there was not much on Nicaragua. There was a book called The Moon Travel Guide, by a gentleman named Joshua Berman, who actually this year is writing the book again, but he did Peace Corps in Nicaragua, and that book became my Bible. Okay. Yeah.

Years later, I ended up becoming really good friends with Josh Berman. He's a great expert on Nicaraguan travel. So, you know, like, Travel Channel, different people contact him as a fixer when they're doing shoots down there and whatnot. He got me on the Travel Channel eating street food in Nicaragua about four years ago.

Yeah, yeah, so they air it sometimes. It's just me stuffing my face, so it's not anything special. That's fantastic. So, yeah, so I flew down, so I was in the States for a month after being out of the country for a year, And flew down to Nicaragua in March of 2003, and, you know, I was down there for a week with John, and we've, he was working out of the back of Nick Perdomo's old factory, you know, which was basically a house that the back was kicked out with some rolling tables, and John said, you want, you know, you want the job?

And I said, yeah, let's do this. And then the next week, John said, I'm out. We'll see you later. And I was like, well, you're in charge.

You're in charge. You're in charge. You're the boss. I was very confused because I thought being his right-hand man, I would actually be working with him.

Right, right. He would be showing you what to do. He said, you know, I know you'll figure it out. Right.

And I said, all right, let's do this. So, man, I didn't leave Nicaragua for a while after that for my first trip. So I was living the dream, man. It was...

Sounds like. Yeah. So you were an integral part of the come up and the development of Drew Estate into what it became, you know, in like, I don't know, a few years ago, and then kind of what it turned into, obviously, after you left. But I do remember you telling us some stories about, so I didn't know that it started out of the back of the house, which seems to be the...

The design for any successful cigar factory is you start off small and obviously, you know, you don't, you don't get ahead of yourself and you kind of start to develop. I do remember you telling me stories about how you would kind of successfully manage products as well as development of the cigars and they're all in different locations. Talk a little bit about that, if you will. Yeah, so, I mean, at the time we were working out of one building, so there was the production building, then there was another house, which was the packaging, because we couldn't fit everything in one building, and then there was another small little warehouse to hold packaging materials and whatnot, and, you know, it was great, because here I am now able to put my two passions that I've spent the past five years studying in the past world.

I went into the international business and loving cigars into real life and, you know, I was very much wanted to prove myself and, you know, show myself, first of all, that I could do this and also, of course, you know, John and the rest of the team, I didn't meet anybody else from the team, though. They all thought John was crazy because they didn't meet me, you know, I remember... They just threw this guy in out of the jungle. Yeah, I remember, you know...

Now he's in charge. Nick's handling that. Who the hell is Nick? Correct.

That was a guy I found on the internet. One of John's co-workers at the time picked me up and turns around and is looking at me and just staring at me. " And she goes, "You're really kind of normal. I thought you were going to be insane.

" But you're wearing a palm hat and dressing in grass. You know, John's a character. Yeah, you don't know what you're getting. You know, he's extremely creative.

And so, yeah, nobody knew. And, you know, it's a big -- I can understand that from a team standpoint, you know, from the state side. But, again, this was something nobody -- it's difficult. You know, you're in Nicaragua, 2003.

You know, it's not like it is -- it's come a long way now. Now, you know, we have the Cigar Fest, Puro Sabor coming up. Right. You know, in 2003, I was really, besides Peace Corps workers, the only gringo in the north of Nicaragua.

I mean, this was a Sandinista stronghold, and, you know, there was so much negativity about just, you know, Iran Contra, Sandinistas, all this stuff. So, you know, to get people to go down there and live there, you know, jeez, I mean, that was, you know, but here I am, you know. Did you speak Spanish at the time? I was going to ask him.

I spoke Italian. Okay. So, I didn't even speak fluently Spanish. I knew kind of basics.

Right. , and then the GM at the factory, who was the same age as me at the time, I was 24. Okay. The team was all young.

They were all the same age. I think the main accountant was the oldest person at the time, and he was probably 35 at the time. Maybe even a little younger, so he spoke, the GM spoke a little bit of English, probably about as much as I spoke Spanish, so, you know, it was a process, but, you know, you can speak Italian and sort of get it and communicate. Last time I was in Italy, I spoke Spanish and got away with it, but I picked it up, I picked it up and started to really immerse myself, started to learn.

" So we'd be knocking down walls, renting out other buildings, and we had buildings all throughout town, which became an operational challenge. Imagine the logistics probably had to be crazy. It was insane, especially you're dealing with a product that needs proper humidity levels, and this and that, and then quality control was a big step, because I felt responsible for everything at that point. And, you know, I was the guy from the States.

I felt, you know, John's right hand man, I took on the responsibility of everything. Right. And, you know, being a foreigner in another country, it's very different traveling through a country than living in a country. So, you know, you're always really working to an extent, you know, even when you're, you know, people see you as a representation.

Right, no matter where you go, you're the Drew State guy. Well, people think I'm John to this day, though, you'll hear people when I'm down there, you know, they think I'm, because, you know, I was a guy down there all the time, so, you know, they think I was the owner, but, yeah, man, and then, you know, the company was making pretty much infused cigars at the time. I was not an infused cigar smoker by any means. I was a hardcore traditionalist, personally.

Working in a cigar store, I understood the role of infused cigars and respected it. And, you know, I always tell people, I'm not here to, I can't tell people what they, if you enjoy something, you enjoy it, you enjoy it, I mean, how am I to tell you what you should be enjoying or not? More power to you, so, yeah. So, before we jump too far ahead, I want to, I want to, I want to bring you back in.

The, the, so, you started off as an observer, you, you know, you observed what, how this, the product was being made, how, how raw materials were being handled. Eventually, you started implementing systems into that business, right? Do you remember, when you started to implement the systems, what the average percent of cigars with issues was? Or, I don't know the exact term you would use for something like that?

Fail rate? Yeah. Before I got there or before I got there? Well, I mean, if you knew the number before you got there.

So, I'll tell you a story because John has talked about this on, you know, YouTube videos and on Cigar Safaris. You know, what I didn't realize at the time was about eight months before I got on board, six, six months before I got on board, John was traveling, promoting the company. He was out of Nicaragua for a while. He came back and they had made a lot of cigars that were unsmokable.

Right. Tight. You know, one of the quality control steps on the production floor is weight. Right.

So if you overpack, or humidity levels of the fillers have to be at a certain humidity, otherwise if they're too moist, you're going to end up putting too many fillers in, the weights are going to be off, and then you're going to have tight cigars. So the guy in the production floor at that time that was the head completely fucked up everything, and there was like close to a million sticks that were unsmokable. " Right. And I was like, holy shit, man, this is insanity, how does this happen?

And then, you know, I learned how something like this could happen, and then I made it 110% sure that this would never happen ever again. So I started adding quality control filters, I really started developing the quality control team, Understanding how important that key experienced people you know in quality control was so crucial you know one issue which happens sometimes in Nicaragua is people don't want to tell you when things are wrong right you know or we say pescados you know a fish is slippery when wet out of water tough to hold on to these are people that kind of skirt around so I worked really close with the GM at the time to really change this culture to make We want to make sure that we respect people that tell us the truth and what problems are. Everybody makes mistakes. It's all about solutions and moving forward and working as a team.

So I started implementing, you know, a step of quality control team at the, you know, we work in pairs, right? You have the bunchers that are doing the filler and then the wrappers. And how many pairs do you think you had at that time? Man, not many.

I mean, well, I mean, it was still a decent amount. We were probably doing like, you know, still at that time, like 5,000 sticks a day, which is a pretty decent number, but you know, I left in 2014 at 105,000 cigars a day, so yeah, so that was a big step, jump, but I ended up putting quality control teams, you know, at the bunching stage. There was no draw testers. John didn't believe in draw testers at the time, of course, I didn't believe it because of the technique was being done properly, and there's no need for it, I mean, it's just another potential crutch, and it was funny because I had been smoking cigars from a lot of people that were using draw testers, and I had draw problems on some of these cigars.

So, a quality control team reviewing the style and technique of how the cigars are bunched is the key, you know, for me and the focus, and especially being the wrapper being very expensive, you want to try to catch any inferior problems you can before that wrapper gets onto the cigar, so that became the root for me of really focusing in on quality control. And instead of just reviewing them when they come off the floor at the end of the process, let's start at the root of this thing. 5 percent, which is phenomenal. And a lot of places, I think, they end up using seconds.

We never really did seconds, right? They'll have a rejection rate, nine, you know, maybe 10%, because then they can use the seconds, whereas we didn't really do that. So to kind of paint a picture for people, you're talking about a million sticks that are plugged, at a rate of 5,000 sticks a day, you're talking about almost seven months worth of work, rough math? Right, yeah.

So that's, you know... It's a lot of sticks. So what happened to those sticks? They just got destroyed?

They had to be used for short filler and stuff like that. Yeah. You try to recoup what you can, but amazingly, you know, the company was just, you know, they caught it early, whereas a lot of that didn't get into the market and, you know, recouped from it and, yeah, we just, from that point on, we just really started growing, you know, tremendously. 5% rejection rate.

Two, it depends on, we trained a lot of people, you know, I ended up training, to get to that point, you can imagine going from 5,000 to 10,000 to 20,000 sticks, to 30,000, I mean, just saying it doesn't even become to do any justice to what that process really entailed. And that entailed, you know, every waking hour of my life and a lot of weekends and nights, you know, being a stickler of quality control, but we had to, you know, because it's a small town, you don't want to start, you know, stealing people from other places. So we had to train a lot of people. So when you have that process, your quality control, you know, your level of rejection is going to go up.

Of course, right. 5. It was ridiculous. Which is, yeah, which is ridiculous, so.

And, you know, the market felt, the market shows, 'cause then, you know, the growth of the products is just, you know, on point. Right. And from whatever you got from, you know, whether it be infused or not infused, everything was just always on point. Right.

You know, which is key, 'cause, you know, I'm a cigar smoker, so the last thing, What I want is to have a problem. Right, right, exactly. So you're also a bit of an entrepreneur, not only in the cigar industry, but you have a couple other hobbies as well. First of all, you live in Esteli, how long a year?

So now, this has actually been the longest I've been out of Esteli in like 14 years. How long have you been out? It's been like three months. And you finally made it here.

Finally. Finally. Finally. Finally.

Finally. You know, we've got our office in Connecticut set up, so we've been trying to get that organized, and we're on a 50-acre tobacco farm in Connecticut, so. So we have a bit of a running joke. I like to drop a hashtag whenever I'm smoking a Foundation Cigar Company cigar called #LetsHangOut.

Now, Nick is infamous in shooting the ghosts, as I said. As a lot of people like to say. Is that the expression? Yes.

I like that. Shooting the ghost. So, you know. That's the first time I've heard that.

No shit. Yeah. " And, you know, he's going a million miles a minute, there's always something going on, and he's like, "Hey, you know, let's hang out later, let's hang out, you know, what are you doing? " So, like, it took two or three times for me to finally figure the fuck out that we're not hanging out.

It's just not going to happen. There's obviously other stuff going on, and he's a busy guy, but his intentions are always good. He wants to hang out, but at the end of the day, you can only do so much in a day. " I'm learning.

I'm learning. I'm like, "Hey, yeah, that's right. " So #letshangout. I hope it develops its own term and kind of grows into something fantastic for you, sir.

We're ruining it right now because we are hanging out. Yeah, that's true, that's true. It'll start over again tomorrow. Yeah, don't worry, you know, I'm sure that we'll run into each other again and you won't hang out, so I'm not really sweating it, you know, with your empty threats.

It only took two years. So, getting back to you being an entrepreneur, you actually own a hotel in Esteli, is that correct? Hotel Puro Esteli, yes, yes, yes. I like how you got, you know, a little darker voice, a little more.

You did think about it. That'd be great, didn't it? That's nice. El Hotel del Norte.

El mejor hotel del Norte. De Nicaragua. Yeah, so, how long have you owned that? Man, I think it's like five years now.

No shit, oh wow. So two of my buddies from Esteli were starting it up, and they brought me in and said, you know, Maybe you could add something to the Travelers, kind of, which, you know, I tried to here and there. Fortunately, starting a cigar company takes up a lot of my time, so I actually got a wonderful person running the place now. She actually, Juanita is her name, she owns a hostel up the street called Cafe Luna.

And she's got a great bar and restaurant called Café Luz, which is a block up the street. So she's been running it for the past year and a half now. Very nice. And she's been doing a fantastic, fantastic job.

So what's your rejection rate at the hotel? 5%? No, it's much higher than that. You know, it's great.

For me, it's like a step up from, say, your typical hostel. You know, sometimes hostels, you know, for backpackers, because the north has more of that off the beaten path, you know, whereas the south of Nicaragua, you have more of the beaches, the surfing going on, in the north, you know, you have more of, you know, nature reserves, and some zip lining, and, you know, Esteli's a pretty cool town just to hang out, but, you know, so our place, private bathrooms, you know, you got internet, you got TV, no air conditioning, but you got fans. So it's like a step up from your typical youth hostel kind of deal. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people don't really understand the actual demograph of Esteli and what it actually entails.

So, you know, you're talking about it and people are like, "What the hell? " You know? Yeah. Now it's nice because, you know, I love the north of Nicaragua because it's so much cooler.

Right. You know, Managua gets great. Now it's beautiful. Right.

I heard they got down to like the low 60s. Yeah, yeah. I saw that the other day. Skip was talking it up on Facebook.

Was he? He had to put long pants on. It's chilly. It's 65 degrees.

I love Adidas jackets, so it's perfect. It's nice. Wear my Adidas jackets. So there are a couple things that I didn't know about you, and maybe you can shed some light on it.

What the hell is you're the executive producer of Sex, God, and Rock and Roll? You know, yeah, that show, unfortunately, yeah, so that was through a friend, this gentleman by the name of Stuart Davis, which is kind of a, he's an interesting musician slash kind of TV personality, developed a show called Sex, God, and Rock and Roll, so it was sort of like a daily show premise for, you know, Sex, God, and Rock and Roll. And it was on for a little bit. Unfortunately, it didn't take off, but I got to help out with the show and grab a fancy title, so it was pretty cool.

That's nice. Yeah. Okay. You know, I like to be involved with creative projects where I can.

Like a podcast? Which is a podcast I love, man. This is great. These mics are pretty badass.

the stage two of the mics stage one of the mics was pretty bad but you know we're getting there taking baby steps it's just a labor of love for us it's not something we make money on it's something we like to do we're having a good time with it what do you think it's fun I'm trying to learn how to do all this garage band and editing stuff I get into that we're going to twist your words around totally When we're done here. I can't wait to see the editing. Yeah, you want to know what I'm saying. Yeah.

It's going to be great. It's going to be fantastic. So what about this clothing line that I've heard about as well? Ja me que a neva fa se que, you know.

Yeah. Something like that. Something with no vowels. That's kind of how, you know, my art director for Foundation Cigar Company is from Esteli.

Amazing, talented artist. His name is Alex Garcia. His street name is Thief Operandi. Very nice.

Nice. Serious business. I need a street name. I want a street name.

Thief has been a graffiti artist, an artist, you know, since the 90s, and then sort of it, you know, Esteli was always a big art and poet, Nicaragua has always been known as the land of the rebels and poets, so you used to have, you still have a lot of mural art, traditional mural style art there. And then in the '90s, you know, Thief really started with the graffiti, and a friend of his also, Mez, and then you had, you know, Drew Estate, then started popping through the scene and really kind of put, you know, art, that kind of more graffiti style on the map using it and their stuff, but Thief's been there for a long time, and we actually worked together on this clothing project called Jamaikia, which is a play on words, so it was in it. The organic clothing line that sort of kept me sane over the years, sort of, you know, through doing cigars and, you know, all the time just being cigars, cigars, cigars, I was like, let me do something creative. I love reggae music.

You know, he loves reggae music. He loves art. So we started making, you know, a nice little clothing line and, you know, just sort of like a little side project. Are they still in production or what?

Yeah, we do them, but we do them pretty, like, limited edition style stuff. I never see you wearing any of this shit. Come on, man. I'll hook you up, man, if you want some.

Absolutely. I'll send you a little shit, man. They're pretty sweet. Is this going to be like, hashtag let's hang out?

Most definitely. Most definitely. So is that we're going to come? Just send me a picture of the shit?

No, I got a bunch. Actually, yeah, I'll hook you up. You got to remind me, though. How are you not out promoting these things, man?

Dude, I tell you, man, Foundation Cigar Company, it's-- It's a lot of your time. I got you. Been eating, breathing, sleeping. " That's true.

I've been wearing it. I wore it all last week. I was actually, actually the beginning of the month, I was in, I flew down last second to Miami for Art Basel, and I was rocking it out there. All right, cool.

I got a great shirt called Roots Music. I'll show it to you. It's a great, everybody, that design does killer for us. Yeah?

Yeah. Very cool. All right, so you want to talk a little bit about the Highclere Castle? The story behind it, because it's kind of unique in itself, I think that it's a fantastic Ecuadorian-Connecticut, or it's not Ecuadorian, it's Ecuadorian-Connecticut, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brazilian Matafina binder. Yeah, love that Brazilian Matafina. And then what, Nikka fillers? So we got some fillers from Omotepe, as you know, you know, volcanic islands in Lake Nicaragua, awesome.

You know, this is why Nicaragua is so, you know, popular and grows such great tobacco. The most active volcanoes in Central America, so Omotepe is a special place, being a volcanic island, we use a hybridized seed, actually grown in Esteli on a farm called Soledad, it's a Corojo Criollo Cross seed, that AJ actually grows, so you get like that sweet and spicy kind of in one leaf, then we got some tobacco from, a little bit from Condega, and there's a little bit from Jalapa. So, yeah, a good friend of mine, Adam Von Gutkin, which is a great name, owns a distillery in Connecticut called Onyx Moonshine. Adam and I actually became friends through a retailer in Connecticut called Mickey Blake's.

One of the retailers there, Lou, actually introduced us and we became good friends, you know, over the past three years. And he became good friends, him and his wife, with Lord Carnarvon from Highclere Castle. Adam is one of those amazing, just outgoing entrepreneurs that, you know, he just pretty much went to the castle and happened to run into Lord Carnarvon and they hit it off. Just knock on the door?

Pretty much. I mean, that's Lord Carnarvon, homeblaze. That's the style that he does, you know, it's like people that, you know, not afraid to... It's highly effective.

It's so effective and there's some, you know, it's possible, you know, all these things are possible. I think that's where people close themselves off a lot of times. Right, because they don't think about it. You don't.

If you don't think about it and have the idea, then it can never manifest into reality. So Adam's one of those guys and he became really good friends with them. And so Highclere Castle, you know, Downton Abbey, really infamous. It was actually the same architect that actually designed Parliament Building, so it's very similar in style, 5,000-acre estate, they became such good friends that they're working on a whiskey and gin project, so that's in the works, a lot of the ingredients are being grown on the estate at Highclair Castle, Lord Carnarvon is very much into agriculture and really down-to-earth, amazing, amazing guy.

He's really him and his wife have done amazing things for the castle, you know, because coming in, it's expensive to run a castle. So, man, you know, it's got to be crazy. Upkeep is crazy. So I think Downton Abbey really helped, you know, keep the of course, you know, there's paintings there that are priceless that you could sell and keep.

But you don't want to be that. You know, there's it's been in the family for so long. there's such history so adam said you know to lord canarvon you have to meet nick you know his passion for cigars is same as you know what we're doing in in the liquor we we met and hit it off and i invited him down to to nicaragua invited adam and once he saw the process from seed to smoke i mean he had never seen it personally even though there's the history of cigar smoking And Highclair Castle goes back to the early 1800's, you know, he fell in love, and they tapped me to do a blend for the castle and to Foundation Global Distributors and National Distributors, so, you know, I started geeking out once I learned about the history, you know, there, and got to talk with the archivist, and they, on the Highclair Castle Cigar website, we actually started posting some of the documents and receipts from his great And his grandfather discovered King Tut's tomb. That's neat.

That's pretty cool. Smoked a cigar in celebration. I mean, that kind of stuff. You know, but that's what they would do.

That was the tradition. It was always after supper, you know, you go to the smoking room or the library and you enjoy a cigar. So I really got to see those documents and use that as the inspiration for the line. And it's just kind of surreal.

Right. Well, I think it's a ridiculously good cigar, and I hate you for making it, because it's fucking awesome. I appreciate that. You know, it's a, you know, like you said, similar, it's got, you want the, you know, the flavor, you know, body strength.

Connecticut Shade, you know, I tell guys, have you ever smoked a Maduro cigar with a Connecticut Shade wrapper? Right. And that's kind of what, because that's what that Modafina really helps, you know, to buffer the strength. Right.

So you're able to use some of the filler tobaccos, same like with the Pennsylvania. Because I think the Connecticut shade is so thin, you know, when you start using heavier filler tobaccos, if you don't have a binder to help buffer it, it just comes too aggressive. So then people use much lower priming, you know, fillers, and then it becomes just a super mild cigar. So you have to...

You want to make something that's universal, right? So it's acceptable from a guy who doesn't smoke on the regular and a guy who smokes all the time, right? Yeah, exactly. I think you definitely fucking nailed it with that stick.

I really do really like it. And like I said, I hate you for it because I smoke it every day or every other day. Nice, yeah. " Which is great because, you know, when I made the blends, I actually got down to seven blends.

And then when Lord Carnarvon, Adam, we were all smoked, everybody, we all chose the same blend. So it was kind of like, for me being a hardcore guy, like you're saying, it worked. That's fantastic. All right, so we do have, you know, three questions that we like to ask all of our...

This is where you don't like us. Yeah, absolutely. But before we get to that, I do want to ask you one question. I've heard you answer this question before.

I had a question before, however, I haven't heard the updated answer as of right now. When the fuck are you going to own your own factory, man? What the fuck? In due time.

Don't give me this bullshit FDA, yada yada, you know? You know, I couldn't right now, just, my experience for the past 14 years has been on the production blending, tobacco side. Right. You know, so I haven't had that time with retail, you know, the only time I'd see retailers is at the IPCPR, Right.

Or if people came down on trips, but even when people came down on trips, I was busy running a factory, I didn't have the time to, you know, hang out and, you know, run the factory, so it was very important for me to, you know, to hire my own quality control guys that worked for me and to work with partners that I would feel comfortable with being out of Nicaragua, because I knew I would have to travel more, you know, stateside. So, for the beginning, I think it was where, especially with all this FDA coming down at that time, it was like... No, no, it made sense before, but you know... Yeah, trust me, it's difficult.

Right. Because that's my, you know, that's just... but my partners were able to do... I couldn't do a situation with production if it wasn't right.

Right. And so, you know, Topsa, Eduardo, I get full, you know, I get, the doors are open. Right. You know, and they know I know the process.

Right. You know, they know, so I'm able to go in there and, you know, access the tobaccos that I need, select everything that I need. And the same thing with AJ. You know what I mean?

So, it's basically like I have factories within factories. So I get kind of the best of all worlds. Right. But one day, I would love to have a factory.

One day. Jesus Christ. I can give it a straight answer. I got the whole plan for it.

No, there's no formal date. I mean, I have no, but I got the plan because I know exactly, I mean, the factory is going to be badass. Right. All right.

Let's get this exemption. Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. All right.

Hey, ready for the questions? We're going to hit you. I don't know. These things are tough sometimes.

People get tough questions. Question number one, what one person, living or dead, would you like to have a cigar with? You know, it would have to be, so my father's father, my grandfather, he was the Connecticut Broadleaf smoker. My other grandfather was still alive, he's 92 right now.

He's the pipe, his main was like pipe, but he was a cigar smoker too. But I never got to smoke a cigar with my grandfather and my dad's side and he's the one we used to drive around in his silver caddy, he used to take my brother and I to Mr. Steak and Mr. Steak, when you checked out, you had the glass case with cigars and he would buy his Connecticut Broadleaf cigars and I get a, you know, one of those bubblegum cigars, which is probably illegal now or whatever, but, you know, you walk out of there like a million bucks, but.

He never got to see me working in the shop, or, you know, working in the company, you know, starting my own company and all that, so that would just be awesome, that would just be killer, so - Great answer, great answer, yes. Okay, next question. Best piece of advice anyone ever gave you? Oh my God.

See, this is the kind of question, you know, best pieces, best piece of advice everyone gave. Treat others the way you want to be treated. Yeah. That's sort of what I live my life on.

So, who gave you that advice? That was my other grandfather. Yeah? Yeah.

Okay. You know, when I started smoking cigars, it was with my grandfather who's still alive. So, he's 92. He still smokes?

He does. Yeah, yeah. I love that. He loves Lanceros.

Yeah? He loves Lanceros. Okay. He's a Lancero fanatic.

Yeah, imagine he's been smoking cigars since World War II. Right, wow. You know, I have documents from my other grandfather, he smoked, he fought in the Battle of the Bulge. Oh, kidding.

Of sending letters home for his cigars. Oh, shit. Oh, wow, cool. Yeah, Connecticut cigars.

It's gotta be difficult to get them back though, you know, it's like, okay. I mean, shit. What do you mean? Yeah, how do you find him?

Yeah, exactly, during the Battle of the Bulge somewhere. Yeah. No, his family would send them out there. Yeah, but wasn't it difficult to get, I mean, you know, obviously.

In modern times now, he was traveling through like Belgium, I mean, it was before the Battle of the Bulge, but I have all these like facsimile, I don't know what the form of communication was, but they're all like, I got tons of them. No shit. Yeah. I don't know what it was.

Like telegraphs? Yeah. That's pretty cool. Yeah.

So they didn't FaceTime back then? No FaceTime, unfortunately. Oh, Jesus. No, unfortunately.

But, you know, but that's what I started, you know, when my other grandfather was smoking cigars. And so it was a big, you know, influence for my brother and I to be able to sit down and have a cigar, you know, and learn about, you know, World War II and just old stories. So it had a dramatic effect on me and, you know, and my brother. We're getting a telegraph in.

We're getting, what's it say? Send cigars. Send the Connecticut cigars. Send the Connecticut.

I'm in Belgium this week. Hope all is well. Send cigars. I have a dollar bill from him that has every place that he went to, he wrote, and the date of where he was in World War II.

Oh wow, that's cool. And it's a silver, it says silver certificate, exchangeable upon demand to the bearer. That's when you can trade in dollars and get silver, but it has Belgium, France, and I have his photo album that is, it's incredible. What about medals?

Did he have any medals? Medals. I don't think I have any medals. My other grandfather does.

Yeah. My other grandfather that's alive fought in Okinawa. That's kind of a big deal. I have his.

So he used to do a lot of hunting. One night, this was years ago, four years ago, I said, you know, Pop, what happened to your guns and do you have any guns left? He said, you know, I sold most of them. I only have a couple guns left, and one of them is very special.

And he brings out of his room a leather case, opens it up, and there's a Japanese signature on the inside, it was a Walter PPK, that he knew that Japanese field marshals had sidearms and swords, and he didn't have a sidearm, so he stalked one of the Japanese field marshals and got the sidearm off him. When he was sleeping, or you gave it to him? No, no, no, no, no, he took him out, unfortunately, you know, he took him out and slept with it by his bedside ever since, so, crazy shit. That is crazy shit, yeah.

Alright, last question, what's your favorite cigar? That's not yours. Oh, snap, that's not mine. You can't tell them that, you gotta let them suffer a little bit first.

Dude, that's not mine. Yeah. Ooh. Ooh.

I don't know, man. That's tough. I like... So let me ask you, there's so many good cigars out there.

Yeah. You know what I mean? We understand that. You're not getting off the hook.

I'm gonna tell you, I mean, Padrón's always been one of my favorites, man. Of course. Padrón, the 1964. Yeah.

You know, I haven't smoked... Maduro or natural? Maduro. Torp or?

Maduro. I would smoke the, what was it? It was like the Toro size. Yeah.

Exclusivo? Yep. Yeah, yeah. I just haven't smoked so many.

You know, I try cigars from other people here and there. Right. But I haven't smoked consistently like other people's. Like today's a rare occasion.

Right. This FQ is the proper smoking really nice. Yeah. I'm just, you know, always smoking and quality controlled.

Right. So, I can't, I haven't really given a good assessment of smoking a lot of other people's smokes. Right. Because I rarely smoke them, but, you know, one of the best cigars I ever smoked in my life, I'll give you that, was Pudos Indios No.

2, but that was in 1996. That cigar was one of the most phenomenal cigars in just that year. Right. That year, there's a whole story of just craziness that happened after that, but that year, Tom Selleck, Cigar Aficionado was rated with Opus X No.

2, Monte Cristo No. 2. Cigar was phenomenal. It was made by Rolando Reyes Sr.

that year. There was an article in the back of Cigar Aficionado that year that kind of made me want to become a cigar smoker. It was just this, his factory is in Honduras, so the article, you know, started the roosters crowing in the morning, and the, you know, it described the whole, and once I read that, I was like, man, that's awesome, I want to, and he literally spent his nights reviewing every cigar, he didn't review production during the day, he was up all night reviewing the production from that day, but that cigar was phenomenal, phenomenal, I think I got two in my humidor still. How?

From '96. And I got four Opus X from '96. To smoke them. What are you doing with your life?

I mean, I'm so confused. Memories, man. Memories. Yeah, Mikey's a big believer in smoke it now.

Yeah, I don't keep anything. He doesn't like to hold on to stuff. " Nah, I'd just start smoking shit, is what would happen. I know, that would be dangerous.

Yeah, exactly. We should hang out. Hang out. You gotta come up to Connecticut for that.

For sure. Well, yeah. I mean, my luck is I'd show up there and you wouldn't be around. I'd be around.

Like, yeah, no, I'm gonna be there, I'm gonna be there. I'd be sure not to be around. I'd have to talk to David and get the hookup. Yeah, I gotta keep an eye on that guy.

Well, you know, thank you very much for coming out and joining us on the show. Like I said before, I really, truly feel that you are one of the greatest blenders of my generation, for sure. Appreciate that. You're insane in your own fashion.

I'm definitely insane. It's insane. That's what kind of makes you a genius in this industry. So that's pretty much it.

But the thing when you sit down and talk to Nick, everything just sounds so much better. I know it's all the history you give with the cigars and all the information. Yeah. I can't remember what I was doing in '96, I don't know what cigar I smoked.

Yeah. But everything with him has so much background and so much history. Right. Yeah, that's what we try to, you know, I try to do with, you know, foundation is if you look at it, you know, there's so much, I love history.

So being able to now do brands and put, you know, you know, for God's sakes, I launched a cigar that nobody could pronounce, which is, but, you know, it's real, you know, I try, I'm just doing what I love and putting my all into it. You can tell, let's just say, you can tell when you talk, and I hope people respond, so it's great, I appreciate it, you know, and the support and, you know. Let's hang out. Let's hang out.

All right, cool, man. Let's do it. Well, that's all we got, so. Thank you, everybody.

And by the way, just so you know, don't forget to leave us some feedback on the podcast, we'd like to hear what you have to say, and how we can make things better for you, and please tell your friends about us, you know, the more people that know, the more people that want to be educated in the cigar industry, I think the better this industry will be as a whole, so. Nick, you want to tell everybody how to get a hold of you through social media? com, Nick Aragua, or Mel Illo, which I like now, because that's, ill is pretty cool. You gotta slow it down.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mel Illo. All right, cool, man. That's it.

That's it. Thank you, everybody. Thanks, guys. That's it.

Show's over. Time for everybody to get back to work. The dream is free, but the hustle's sold separately. We're out.

Every day I'm hustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin', bustlin Hustle and Hustle and Hustle and Hustle and Hustle and Hustle and Hustle and Hustle and Hustle and Hustle and Hustle every day, I'm every day, I'm every day, I'm whole love.

Show Notes

Origin Series...Nick sits down with us for a while and tells us how he has traveled the world and fell in love with Cigars