Special Interview with Jeremiah Meerapfel

Episode Summary

Jeremiah Meerapfel — fourth-generation tobacco man and the public face of Cameroon wrapper — sits down for one of the most personal interviews he's given. The conversation opens on ring gauge preference (he's a Lonsdale and corona gorda smoker) before moving into what it actually means to inherit a 400-year-old family leaf business: the refusal to get comfortable, the deliberately unglamorous lifestyle choices, and the belief that intergenerational survival depends on sacrifice rather than luxury. He explains why he travels with his young children, exposing them early to tobacco farms, factories, distribution and retail so they understand there is no easy path in this trade.

The heart of the episode is the story of his father, Richard Meerapfel, who first went to eastern Cameroon in 1969 at roughly 18 years old, was accepted into a Pygmy tribe, and years later bought out the French monopoly when it abandoned Cameroon tobacco after the decline of Gitanes and Gauloises dark-tobacco cigarettes — saving the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people. He was later named honorary Minister of Education and Minister of Health in Central Africa for quietly funding schools and clinics. Jeremiah traces the family further back to his grandfather, the largest exporter of Cuban tobacco in history pre-embargo, who held Cubatabaco and Habanos licenses and introduced Cohiba commercially to Europe. He explains how Cameroon became the post-embargo replacement leaf for the old Cuban families and fueled the 1990s boom on cigars from Cohiba, Partagás, Hoyo de Monterrey, Fuente's Don Carlos, Hemingway and Gran Reserva lines, and La Aurora's Preferidos — and why his father refused blank-check offers that would have cornered the supply.

He's candid about the decline that followed: manufacturers cutting corners, Cameroon seed grown in Ecuador at a fraction of the cost, look-alike wrappers slapped on boxes, and the family personally financing a leaf that yields perhaps ten times less than other wrappers and costs multiples per pound to produce. He also discusses working alongside his brother Joshua and his sister, taking over at 24 after their father's death in 2003, the family's decades-long role developing Fuente and other brands in the Eastern Hemisphere, and his close family ties to Carlos Fuente Sr. and Carlos Fuente Jr.

The final segment covers the Meerapfel Cigar itself — a project 20 years in the making that decomposed and rebuilt every element of a cigar, from box to bands to ribbons to aging — and the unprecedented QR code on each box that books a one-on-one appointment with Jeremiah or Reinhardt. He argues that a consumer spending $50 to $100 on a cigar has the right to understand exactly what went into it, comparing it to Pagani walking a buyer through their car. He closes on honoring his father: "never enough."

In This Episode

1. 01
   Small Ring Gauges and the Committed Smoker
   Jeremiah and the host open on why Lonsdales and corona gordas appeal to devoted enthusiasts while 60-ring cigars dominate the mass market.
2. 02
   Setting the Tone Across Generations
   Why nothing in the Meerapfel business is relaxed, and how comfort is what kills third- and fourth-generation family companies.
3. 03
   Raising the Next Generation in Tobacco
   Second-hand clothes, a Subaru instead of a Bentley, and taking the kids on the road to tobacco farms and factories so they learn the unglamorous side of the trade.
4. 04
   Richard Meerapfel and the Saving of Cameroon
   The 1969 trip into eastern Cameroon, acceptance into a Pygmy tribe, buying out the French monopoly, and honorary ministerial titles for funding schools and clinics.
5. 05
   The Grandfather, Cuba and the Embargo
   How the family became the largest exporter of Cuban tobacco, held Cubatabaco and Habanos licenses, and introduced Cohiba commercially to Europe.
6. 06
   Why Cameroon Wrapper Costs So Much
   Extremely low field yields plus heavy factory wastage make Cameroon the most expensive leaf on the planet — and why the family funds it themselves.
7. 07
   Working With Joshua and His Sister
   Taking over at 24 and 22 after their father's 2003 death, how roles evolved organically, and the family's long relationship with the Fuentes and the Don Carlos line.
8. 08
   The Meerapfel Cigar and the QR Code Appointment
   A 20-year project that rethought every component of a cigar, and the unprecedented decision to let consumers book one-on-one time with Jeremiah or Reinhardt.

Brands & Cigars Discussed

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Transcript

let me know when you start recording and uh i started recording how's the cigar they're fantastic man that one there yeah you like that that size this is a great size for sure man um you like those thin ring gauges as well lonsdale corona gorda you're a real cigar man yeah i think I don't think you have to be to be in the industry, you know, you see a lot of small size ring gauges out there, my friend? Well, I just think that more often than not, people that are really kind of committed to it are the guys that will smoke that size. God bless. However, your number one consumer is not that guy, right?

He's the 60 ring gauge, the ego guy, the person that has something to prove, right? That's more often the case. I think there needs to be something for everyone, but I certainly enjoy the smaller ring gauges. Yeah.

By far. All right, well, hey, listen, the man of the hour, he needs no introduction, but I'll go ahead and introduce him anyways. His name is Jeremiah Mirapfel. His family has been in tobacco since the dawn of time.

And he is the face of Cameroon tobacco from Cameroon, Africa. Say hi. Oh! And thank you for pronouncing marifle correctly.

Yeah. Yeah, people have an issue with that sometimes. Well, I apologize if I screw it up. No, but you didn't.

Cool. More often than not, usually when someone says postana, they say Powstanie, and I'm just like, whatever. Yeah, we can relate to this. Yeah, of course.

And then, you know, my last name has no vowels, so it's not easy to get that one right either. So, I kind of want to just jump right into things, 'cause I had I've seen your responses, and they can be elaborate at times, and I want to give you that opportunity to kind of respond. So, one thing that you said was when you base your life on the words and promises from generations before you, it sets a tone. What did you really mean by that, as far as a tone?

I don't understand your question. So like, so you know, as far as generations are concerned, I like what you said, right, you're talking about your basis is based, the reason why, what you're kind of motivated on is the fact of the generations before you, right, and that's really kind of what has kind of got you going, but like it has set, you're saying that it's set a tone, and like, what is that? What's that tone? Is it a tone that requires you to get up every morning at a specific time, make sure specific ducks are in a row when it comes to whatever it is as far as Cameroon or production-wise as far as the transferring of the tobacco, or is it more relaxed?

Is it more, hey, I know what I have to do, but it can be done at the leisure of myself, right? Like, what is the, what is the, what has given, what tone does that mean? All right. Now I get it.

Okay. I don't, I don't think there's, there's anything we do apart from enjoying those cigars, sitting down with our friends, our customers, lighting up that cigar. I don't think there's anything we do on a professional level, which is relaxed. Right.

to be able to travel through time, you constantly need to be pushing the bar. Pushing it harder and further. Typically, family businesses that end up disappearing is when things get a bit comfortable and a bit too relaxed and the second, third, or fourth generation And are so relaxed that the hardcore sacrifices necessary for intergenerational family businesses are no longer there and the businesses are either sold out to large corporates or they disappear. Right.

And that's something you have to be well aware of when you get into a company like ours. Not an easy choice to make, but it's an essential choice because there's nothing that's going to be easy about it. We're not looking for easy. Our only objective is intergenerational transmission.

And knowing that intergenerational transmission depends on pushing boundaries, depends ironically on pain and bleeding and vast amount of blood, sweat, and tears, without being cliché, because those are the choices you need to make when you want to stay in existence. Do you think that you can set, convey that and set that tone for your kids? We already have. Yeah.

It starts when they're born. Okay. It's, it's, it's, it's a requirement. Offering them an easy and comfortable life, full of luxury, is the best way to destroy them.

Right. In that optic. You know, people used to come to me and say, you know, you're crazy, why does your wife dress your children, you know, in a second-hand clothes shop? Why do you guys own a car and not two, and why is that car a Subaru Forester and not a Bentley?

Why do you make choices in terms of lifestyle? Private, Intimate Lifestyle. And that's preparing the next generation. So, that's great, right?

I love all of that. As a dad, you kind of have like a plan, right? And you have an idea as to how you want to instill principles to your kids, right? I think that some of the challenges of that can be when you have to travel around a lot for work and you have to leave them at home.

So what can you do to really kind of keep those principles and keep that belief? I mean, to have the motivation that you have is really unparalleled, right? To push harder than your father, I would say, from what I read, I think is what you're trying to do. You're asking several questions here.

Yeah. Well, let me circle back. So, but how can you continue to really, to push even a fragment of that or some of that into your kids and still be able to have the ability to kind of run a company where you have to travel and you have to go to all over the world? I'm blessed at this stage of my life, I started a bit late, I'm not going to go into that, but my kids are young.

You didn't start very late. I mean, my kids are close to your age, I felt like I started at an appropriate age. Yeah, but I think you're a little younger than I am. Not by much.

Not by much. Yesterday, we had the pleasure of meeting and hugging, but I believe you were hugging my children before you hugged me. Yeah. That should partially answer your question.

I spend an enormous amount of time traveling with my children, bringing them with me, not because I want to pull them out of school, But because I believe that they need to understand from the youngest age, and they're young, what's required and necessary to be in this cigar and the tobacco business. This business is not about the easy path. This business is about tobacco farms. And anybody who's been in a tobacco farm, who's run a tobacco farm knows how difficult it is to grow tobacco and how non-glorious it is to grow tobacco, it's a very, very difficult job and you need to be deeply in love with LEAF to be in that business.

Then there's the manufacturing. There's the glorious side which some people look at, but there's the not so glorious side which is the work that needs to be put in to produce fine cigars, especially when you're not cutting corners. And then there's distribution, sales, there's retailing, nothing comes easy, as you know. Yeah, 100%.

Children need to understand that. They need to be exposed to it. And so, to answer your question, kids spend a significant amount of time traveling with daddy, listening to daddy, going around, meeting people in the industry, developing both a love, a deep love and affection and understanding of what this industry is about. At the same time, realizing the commitment that's necessary to successfully inherit a torch which they can then pass on to the future generation.

My sister's here with me. She's doing exactly the same thing. Her children are with her doing exactly the same thing. Same thing.

That, in my opinion, is what can give you a better chance at survival over centuries. For me, I have one kid in particular. All my kids love me, as I'm sure all your kids love you, right? It depends.

It depends on the moment. Depends if the cigar is good or not. Amongst other things, I'm sure. But I know that there's one specifically who really kind of idolizes me.

And you can see it that I can almost do no wrong when it comes to one in particular. Do you feel like you have any kid in particular that solely idolizes absolutely I think you find that that's often age driven as well. Yeah. There's periods in the kids lives where you're Superman, and then all of a sudden, you're no longer Superman.

Right. So yeah, I agree with you as far as kids kind of go through. I see where you're going with the question. I think that...

And I'm happy to see that the three children are proud of their father. I think that because of the mechanics of how we work and how we communicate and how they participate in my life, I think they realize the sacrifices that are made for what, in our family, we consider the greater good, and the greater good is the leaf. And we speak a lot, and with my wife as well, there's a lot of communication. And so, they can hear what's being voiced, they can hear the sacrifices that are being made, you know, when sometimes, as anybody else in the world, you know, I might sit down exhausted and feeling disappointed with certain things, and voicing that discontent where I don't understand why somebody would cut a corner, or why somebody would want to make a decision which doesn't bring up the quality of a product, or make it, or make it a product.

Make it better. Make it what it should be. And it's good that they hear all of this. And it's good that it makes them proud.

And it's good that that instills those values, those deep values of we consider ourselves samurais of the leaf. We consider ourselves samurais of the cigars. And we'd rather go harakuri than doing it the wrong way. Right.

And that's important for kids to understand. Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I think this is one of the biggest challenges, right?

And, you know, I think that we all always look back and say, you know, am I doing this right? Am I messing them up? You know, I'm definitely... Oh, that's gonna happen anyways.

Yeah, that's a given, right? So when things kind of started, I'll kind of back up to your dad, and forgive me if I mess any of this up, but... to start growing tobacco in Cameroon had to be, I mean, I can understand the vision. However, I couldn't imagine it being profitable for a long period of time.

It's, I don't think, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no way that you just kind of started to grow And it was instant success. What do you think motivated your father to keep going and keep growing and developing all the tobacco in Cameroon? It's very difficult for me to speak about this. I'll answer your question because it's a very good question.

It's a very deep question. I don't know where this is coming from because typically nobody's asked me these questions before. This is a very, very serious question you're asking. What I'm about to tell you is a very, very personal answer.

My father went to Cameroon for the first time in 1969. My grandfather was already trading Cameroon tobacco, and when dad went there, he was, I think it was 69, he was about 18 years old. And he lived there. He lived in the jungle in eastern Cameroon in western Central Africa.

So you have kids, and you now realize that 18 is still a kid, isn't it? For sure. And he's working there. For those who knew my father, he was an insanely empathetic human being.

Anybody who met him, knew him, They were deeply touched by his empathetic characteristics. He's a good person. Deeply good person. And by some unknown reason, for some unknown reason, he was accepted into the pygmy tribe.

Now, in those days, the Pygmies, and still now, but particularly in those days, they did not communicate with the outside world. Not with any of the other tribes, and there's many, many, many hundreds of them in their area. Even more from people coming from outside, outside country, outside. And he was an outsider, and he was brought into the tribe, and he spent time with them, and he lived with them, and typical to my father, he fell in love with the populations down there, he deeply fell in love with the populations down there.

Many years later, when the French monopoly who owned the assets in the area for tobacco growing decided to abandon tobacco because it was mostly used for the Gitane cigarettes and the Gaulois cigarettes which were dark tobacco cigarettes. They disappeared from the European markets. My father understood the repercussions that it was going to have on the local populations. We're talking hundreds of thousands of people impacted if something like this happened.

And there's nothing else. The livelihood of his family, he said, you know, that he had to have a lot of impact. They became his family. He considered them family.

It was going to vanish in the middle of the jungle. And so he made a very bold move. He bought out the French monopoly. And he saved Cameroon.

But he wasn't saving Cameroon wrapper. He was saving the people in the area. Years later, he was awarded by the Central African government Honorary Minister of Education, because he educated more people than they could afford to educate. Honorary Minister of Health, because he subsidized more clinics than the government was able to subsidize.

Now keep in mind, Central Africa is, I believe, the second poorest country on the planet. Never told anybody about this, there was no social corporate responsibility marketing bullshit, he was doing what he was doing very quietly because he truly loved the people. There was not a foundation where they select a few people to do this or a few people to do that, this is on a vast scale for anybody who needed it. So what really kept him going?

Go ahead. When he bought the Monopoly, this was the early '90s. And in the early '90s, it was the beginning of what was going to be a very big boom in the United States in the cigar industry. As you also know, Cameroon, post-embargo, was extremely important for the old Cuban families.

Why? Heller, my grandfather, was the largest exporter of Cuban tobacco in history. The last crop before the embargo, 100% of the export was in its hands and brought to the United States of America. Why?

The USA was producing, at that time, 9 billion cigars with Cuban tobacco, machine made, mostly, in the United States. When they no longer had access to Cuban tobacco, many of the families, the Menendez, they were in the Canary Islands, you had the Bayer factory, which was later owned by the Colmans in Dothan, Alabama, where I was actually born, whilst my father was a mechanic working at the Bayer factory, a lot of them replaced the tobacco, the Cuban tobacco, with what made sense to replace that Cuban tobacco. The Tobacco Men chose Cameroon. Got it.

And so we're in the 90s here, the boom's starting to arrive, and anybody and everybody is trying to access wrapper. Accessing wrapper gives you the tools to grow as a company and to survive as a company during a boom, especially a boom like this one. Cameroon was used on every single one of the superstars at that time. Apart from the Macanudos that used the Connecticut shade, the Cullmans used their tobacco from the valley on the Macanudos.

All of the very strong brands, whether it was Cohiba, whether it was Partagas, whether it was Hoyo de Monterrey, Altadis also had a cigar. Obviously, the Fuentes built a lot of the Gran Reserva, the Don Carlos lines, the Hemingway lines, Jimenez Family, La Aurora, the Preferidos. Cameron fueled all of this growth. And so during this boom, even though some manufacturers tried to offer blank checks to my father to buy every single leaf he was able to produce, Richard Merifel would turn around and say, "No, everybody has the right to survive.

Everybody has the right to grow. " So he was a very faithful friend and a very faithful man and so he did well, he did well, not as well as he could have done if he accepted offers to screw people left, right and center, but he did it the marital way, honestly, one foot in front of the other with dignity and respect. Years later, it became a lot tougher. Manufacturers start cutting corners.

The boom's not there anymore. Hey, let's try to take some Cameroon seed and grow it in Ecuador at a price that would, at a production cost, 10 or 15 times lower than what it would cost in Cameroon. Right. Hey, let's take another type of wrapper that looks like Cameroon, let's slap it on a cigar, because we believe the consumer is an idiot and we can get away with it.

Well, I remember that specifically. But being arrogant and taking the consumer for an idiot is the biggest mistake one can do, because the consumer knows. And at the end of the day, it bites back. And my father refused to play that game.

And all of a sudden, the sale of Cameroon started going down and down and down because more and more people started cutting corners. Cameroon is the most expensive leaf on the planet to grow by a mile. Without getting into numbers and figures, one day of the day, it's the most expensive leaf on the planet to grow by a mile. Without getting into numbers and figures, a wonderful wrapper, very, very high-end, would cost a manufacturer 40 bucks a pound, 50 bucks a pound, 60 bucks a pound, whatever it might be, you can multiply that by several times what would cost a manufacturer to put Cameroon on a cigar.

Why? Because the yields are so low. Not only the yields in the farms, which are probably 10 times lower than most other rappers you know in the world, but also because once the bills arrives to the factory, there's a lot of wastage. Right.

And so you end up with unbelievably low yields and extremely high value tobacco. And that's typically not always a choice that everybody wants to make when they're running their business, and I respect that. Going to your question, but who's financing all of this? If all of a sudden it's not so profitable anymore or it's not profitable at all anymore, who's financing this?

The family. Why? Because it is unconceivable, unconceivable, as long as it's possible, as long as we're able to abandon our families in the middle of the jungle, Because companies become too corporate, companies want to optimize their profitability, and this, my friend, is what the Murfel family has been doing now for many, many years. Did anybody in the family think he was crazy?

Well, they all think I'm crazy now. Okay. So, as far as the vision... But that's a joke, because everybody understands and everybody respects it.

Right. " Right. And quite the contrary. So, thank God, thank God, every member of this family is very much aligned on what's right in life, And what's wrong in life.

And if we have to burn to the ground, yet once again, like almost every generation over the past 400 years, because we will do what we believe is right, then so be it. But I also believe that's the secret why we're still here. I mean, it's remarkable, man, you know, to do what he did, and really kind of set that precedence, you would assume that loved ones around him would have thought that, hey, you're out of your mind, there's like, you're gonna, what? You know, there's, this is a terrible idea.

Well, it's not the loved ones who think that. Loved ones love us because we do this, because they know how we think. Right. It's more the financial directors, or the bankers, or whatever it is, who think we're out of our mind.

Right. But I think that those who know us, and those who've worked with us for such a long time, and many of the people in the company have been there intergenerationally, or people that they worked with intergenerationally. Some companies we work with, I'm speaking within the company as the management, are for many generations, okay, and they know, they know us, and I think they, I think they respect it, I think they, I think they respect hard choices, not always easy, and we've paid heavy prices for making choices like this and heavy, and what we believe to be right choices, it's hard. But I wouldn't have it any other way.

And neither would any other member of my family. So, obviously you work with your family, right? What's it like, I work, my brother's my business partner, right? He brings something to the table that I don't bring, and we work very well together.

And normally when you run into a business, you kind of see that. What's it like working with your brother? Well, I have the honor and the advantage of working with both my brother and my sister. Right.

And, it depends of the day. I mean, sometimes I want to strangle them, sometimes they want to strangle me, and sometimes I think it's the best thing in the world, and that's what family is all about. Sure. But what it does do is bring to the table a common ideology of we know where we came from and we know where we want to go.

And I'm not sure, or I strongly believe, rather, that that's what gives certain encouragements of sacrifice, is that commonality of where we're going. Does that answer your question? I think to some degree, yeah. You know, there's always a lot of, it's very complicated.

You know, I'm not going to sit here and tell you, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, we're, you know, let's all pose on a postcard here and smile, and you know, it's bullshit, you know, that's what families are about. You punch each other, you love each other, you kick each other, and you kiss each other. And if it doesn't work that way, and if it's not what you're seeing, then something is wrong. For sure.

I mean, conflict definitely, as long as everybody's heart's in the right place. Exactly. It helps, right? It actually pushes things in the right direction.

How, so, when it comes to your brother, because I only hear quiet rumblings about him, right? I'm assuming that he, so he has helped really kind of grow the Fuente organization. He's an organization overseas, is that correct? What exactly, what does he do?

Joshua? Yeah. Joshua and I started, let's say, our careers, so to speak, were the, the more responsible part of our careers, when our father passed away, over 20 years. Right.

And there were two main objectives; the first was, and most people don't know this, my father passed away after we were expropriated in Central Africa, so we had lost everything in terms of the growing operations, it was very complicated, the business was under a lot of heat. It's a lot of heat in terms of the growing and in terms of continuity for Cameroon, what we call Cameroon Tobacco. And so the first challenge was, alright, how do we get ourselves out of this and how do we continue Dad's dream? How do we maintain it?

And then how do we appropriate ourselves with that same dream and how do we push it along? How do we understand it? How do we make it happen? Very complicated.

It's very complicated. I was 24 years old and Josh was 22. It's very complicated when you're young kids trying to take on such a big challenge. In parallel to that, the family was running distribution companies.

We were developing markets, premium cigar markets, in the Eastern Hemisphere since the early 1960s. First, with Cuba. My grandfather left Cuba with two licenses in his back pocket. The first being Habanos.

He was one of the very few people in the world that was licensed by the government, the Cuban government, to trade their tobacco. And we did so for many, many, many, many years. And the second thing was, sorry, Cuba Tobacco, and the second license was Habanos, which was Cuban cigars. He introduced Cohiba to Europe.

It was the first person, first company to introduce Cohiba commercially to Europe. We're distributing all of the Cuban brands. Following that, this is going back, remember, 1960s, 1970s. we had friends that said hey can you help us out you know can you can you develop can you develop our cigars in the eastern hemisphere most of these companies were small companies that just started out one of them being the fuentes in the early 80s dad was very very close to carlos senior and carlos jr very close i mean insanely close Love them deeply, protected them deeply, became the godfather of Carlitos' only son, and in the early '80s, when they were producing relatively mild cigars for the US market, because in those days, what was selling?

Candela and Connecticut Shade, that was the market, the main market in the United States for premium cigars. They decided to retweak a brand, a blend, for the European market, they wanted us to carry and to develop their cigars for the Eastern Hemisphere, in those days specifically Europe, because that's where the cigars were being consumed, that's where people were idolizing Cuba, that's where the old prestige was coming from, you know, if you could make it in Europe, you could make it in Europe, you could make it in Europe. This is where all the greatest Cuban Cigar Brands on the planet were being consumed, right? It created what is known since then as the Don Carlos line.

That Don Carlos line was to come and focus on the palate of the European consumer and developed those brands for 40 years. in the eastern hemisphere so Josh and I and later my sister continued to do what we love Do what our family does! Keep a piece of our father with us, in our hearts, and continue growing tobacco, blending cigars, and building brands. So, your father passes unexpectedly, and you're kind of, the three of you were kind of thrust into this position of, we have to now figure out what the Mirafell name is going to be moving forward, right?

How do you determine roles? Hey, okay, I'm, you know, this is what I'm going to do, right? I'm going to be the face and really continue to develop the brand, and you're going to do this. And, you know, you and your brother are very close in age.

Did he, was he okay with it? Was there, you know, yes, this is the right way, or this is the only way? Like, how do, what does that look like? You know, I have two kids.

I have two boys, and I have a little girl, right? I don't know what the future holds for me as far as this industry, but if it keeps going down the path that it's going, I think that it could be generational, right? And when my time comes, no matter whether I plan for it or not, I think that there's going to be a conversation as to who does what. What did that look like for you?

And did it wind up being what everybody wanted it to be? It's a very, very tough question because nothing is static. And things change over time. People grow into things over time as well.

I think it's difficult to kind of plan ahead and try to believe that we know where things are going to go, and I think that we need to have faith in life and time because things naturally happen and naturally take form. Are the roles the same today, for example, than they were in 2003 when my father passed away? Absolutely not. Did anybody plan what the roles would be?

Absolutely not. Have things changed over time, naturally? Absolutely. I think what's important though, is that as long as there's respect and common interests and common values that are passed down to our children, that is what enables things to happen in a positive way or a more peaceful way or a less peaceful way.

And that's the focus. If your question is: what do I have to do for my kids to continue what I'm doing, spend as much time, in my humble opinion, unconditionally bringing them together, and making sure they have common interests and values, and that they marry the right person? Yeah, that's very true. like my mother used to say.

Pick the right one. Pick the right wife or the right husband. Absolutely. You're, at 24 years old, you're pushed into this patriarch position.

You're the oldest. And I understand protecting your kids and teaching them values and stuff and what comes of that. But, you also have a duty to your siblings to some degree, right? You have to look out for them just as much.

No, I mean, my brother could call me anytime, any place, it doesn't matter. He's my older brother, right? And that's what I kind of see fascinating about all of this, right? Because he's the older brother.

He's not the face. He builds and he's extremely valuable to our entire business. But, like, you have the hat. How does he feel about that?

Did, you know, did the passing of your father impact him just as much as it impacted you? And how does that make him feel? you know, you talk about your dad being great when it comes to empathy. I'm curious as to what, how that empathy correlates with you, and when it comes to developing the future of Mirapfel, and not with your kids yet, but with the core brother and sister that you have right now.

How does that make him feel? I don't know, you know, but I'm curious. There's not the slightest doubt in my mind that there's not a child on planet Earth, or certainly not in our family, that wasn't devastated by losing a parent. It would be insanity or horrible to even think that it would affect one or another.

Obviously, it always does in a different way, but at the end of the day, it's devastating. And the pain that everybody feels is immeasurable, as you know. Right. I would hope that he would be proud in the same way that I'm proud of him.

I would hope that any sibling in the world would protect the interests of the other because that's That's what brotherhood and sisterhood is all about. Even if it's not always obvious or not always easy or not always because families, everybody has a brother and a sister and knows what a family is all about, but at the end of the day underlying everything is a huge sense of protection, whether you're the oldest brother, the youngest brother, the tiny sister, For the eldest sister, it's irrelevant. Families are supposed to look after each other, and they're supposed to protect each other. So I'm not sure I understand the question.

When it comes to understanding and empathizing, do you know how your brother feels about you taking on the top role, and you having your grandfather's hat? My brother came to me a few years ago when I finally launched the Mirafil Cigar and told me how proud he was about what was done and how amazing and exquisite it was. And over the years we've shared, and I think it's really important to share, one towards another, showing pride and showing affection. I think tough love is always there with certain personalities.

And part of an education, because we're all, you know, in our family, our father or grandfather, I mean it was tough love, man, to say the least, you know, the canes came out, the whips came out, you know what I mean? It's tough love. But there's also a sense of appreciation and a sense of pride, and that's something which I believe has been present and has enabled a lot of great things to happen. You know, for the longest time, I've always been at odds with my brother.

Always. We're two totally different people, you know. And having tough love from a parent, right, especially, you know, our parents, especially a father's figure, The term, "I love you," or that term of endearment doesn't come around often, if ever. Oh, I've told him, and he's told me, absolutely, and I think that's very important.

And you said that your brother has said that he's proud of you. Do you feel like you're proud of him? Oh, yeah, for sure. And does he know that?

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. No question about it. No question about it.

Do you tell him more often than your father would tell you because of the way that your father didn't give it, like for the lack of that? Or are you more along the lines of your father in that essence? No, I think that every generation gets a bit softer and a bit more communicative. You know, the way I speak to my children, or the way I would speak to my brother or my sister, or anybody else of the family, I think has more, I believe, I might be wrong, but I think has more expression than the generation before me, and certainly than the generation before me.

Oh yeah. So, yeah, yeah, definitely. Okay, I'm gonna change it a little bit here. You guys are doing what I think is fantastic as far as this plan where you have a QR code on your boxes and you can set an appointment, a brief appointment to have a conversation with yourself or Reinhardt.

You want to talk briefly about that and then I'll get into a couple other little things and then we'll let you off the hook? No, because it's the craziest thing I've ever done and I'm probably committed suicide by even accepting it. It's not even accepting to go into a program like this. I love this.

Who came up with this idea? Who came up with the idea? Because it is absolutely insane. It is absolutely insane.

And I think that it's genius. It really is. Until it becomes this complete cluster, which is very possible, but for it to get there, I mean, for you guys to... It's like you test boundaries, right?

We all do, at least those that want to grow. You push. You push, and you see what the response is. And then you push a little further, and you push a little further, and you see what happens.

Like, oh, nothing happened, but we can keep going. Okay, oh, that stung a little bit, but we can keep going. This is one of those ideas. This is something that's totally out of left field, nothing that I've ever seen done before.

Number one, who came up with the idea? And number two, are you prepared if the floodgates wind up being wide open? Because I think this is going to be incredible. Tell me about Miracle Cigar.

Me? Yeah. I couldn't tell the story, even as passionate as I am about the cigar industry and cigars, and even your cigars, I couldn't tell the story nearly as good. All right, forget the Miracle Cigars.

Nearly as good. You love cars, right? This is a whole different. Tell me about a Pagani.

What do you love in life? I love my kids and my wife. Forget the kids. Something that is not part of your They're genetic.

What I'm trying to get to is that at a certain level of certain things, the customer has a right to know. Absolutely. And when somebody is going to go out and spend $50 or $70 or $80, to be honest with you, even if he spends $1 for all I care, he has the right to know. Now, if you're going to go out there and put a cigar at 60 or 80 bucks or 100 bucks and you don't care about the customer knowing or you don't have much to explain to the customer to know because you're just putting a beautiful packaging and a beautiful band and you're rebranding a cigar off the rolling table that you could sell at 2, 5, 10 or 20 dollars or 100 dollars, then you're going to keep your mouth shut.

But if you just spent 20 years, or 25 years, fine-tuning insanity, pushing the limits to the next galaxy, reinventing certain things, forget the price, I'm speaking now about the complexity, I'm speaking about how difficult it is. I'm speaking about putting a proposition on the table, which doesn't exist anywhere else in the world, mark my words, this is a very big statement, doesn't exist anywhere else in the world, not because there's not another cigar that may be as good at it, but because what has been done has never been done before, not even close, does it make it better, no, should you prefer the cigar, no, should you go out and buy more of those cigars, no, but the proposition, what's been done, is insane. I want people to know. And when I was speaking to my team, and I said, how the hell are we going to communicate on this?

How are we going to educate? How are we going to train our partners in the world? There's a big blank around the conference room. Everybody's thinking, how the hell are we going to do this?

We'd have to sit down with every partner for hours and hours and hours and hours, go through every single aspect of what we've done to push this out of what the cigar industry has ever done, and then pray to God that he doesn't forget half of it, and then pray to God that he's able to communicate that to store managers or to his salesmen, et cetera, et cetera, how are we going to do this? So we're going to do it in two ways. Number one, we're going to start spending a lot more time with our partners and we are going to invest that time in explaining to them something that they have no way of knowing because it's never been done before. Right.

I love it. Second thing, if a consumer wants to understand, we'll give it to them. we'll give it to them. We'll explain it to them.

Because once you understand then all of a sudden those 50 bucks, 80 bucks, 100 bucks those thousand dollars, that 10,000 dollars that million dollars, it doesn't matter anymore. You're understanding what's going on at a very high level and it's very intricate. Because like I always say Those who know, know, but you can't on something which is breaking every single rule in the book. Right.

When I developed the cigar, and I developed it over 20 years ago when dad passed away, the proposition was bold and very arrogant. Not arrogant in a bad way. Arrogant in a constructive way. I want to make Daddy proud.

And I want to make what I think to be the best cigar in the world. Now, that's very different from what you or somebody else might think is the best cigar in the world. For me, as a tobacco grower and as a blender, that means putting a different proposition on the table. It doesn't mean it needs to be a preferred cigar by the consumer, okay, and I want to make this very clear, how do you reinvent an industry?

How do you reinvent the rules of what's been done? And so the process was to take every single element about what a cigar is and to decompose it. The box, that goes up on the wall. How do we push the box to a level that's either never been done before or how do we reinvent it?

Right. The bands, the tobacco or the aging of the tobacco, the aging of the cigars, the bands, did I say that? Yes. The ribbons.

Right. Absolutely everything. And it all goes onto the wall and we start working. There's a reason this project took 20 years.

It's not easy, because thinking out of the box on such a traditional product is really complicated. And then once all of that is done, then you put it all back together. But it's so fine, and it's so subtle sometimes, and it's so difficult to capture if you don't know about it, that you're missing out on what's actually been done. Right.

That's often the problem of people going out and buying Pagani cars. I spoke about Pagani or Patek Philippe watches or whatever it is, or a Chanel bag or a dress. They buy it because it's a beautiful brand or they buy it because it's a beautiful proposition. But if they actually know what's actually going on, the enjoyment on the product and the respect for the product goes through the roof.

And once again, not so easy. There's a reason why when you buy a Pagani, there's an engineer there and he's trying to walk you through everything. He's not doing it to sell you a second car. He's doing it so that you actually understand and you can appreciate and you can take advantage of what that car has to give you.

If you don't understand what's happening here, you are not going to reach the level of pleasure and of interest. What's actually happening, and the reasons behind it, and that's when we came up with the idea of, well, let's make ourselves available, we don't know where this is going to go, I mean, it's going to be crazy, it already is going crazy, you know, these spaces are filling out, Reinhardt and I are going to spend an enormous part of our time, our personal time, our professional time, in speaking to people individually. That's not the most efficient way of doing things. It's a lot easier for me to get on a podcast with you, you know, go through it once, broadcast to whatever, but it's not gonna, in my humble opinion, it's not gonna get across in the same way, and it will touch a certain amount of people who follow you, but maybe not somebody else.

So let's open this up, let's open it up, and let's walk people through it, and if they never buy a cigar of ours, fine, that's not the point. The point is, if you want to elevate your experience, because understanding something will elevate your experience, and if that's what I've committed my life to do, is to create what I believe is the best tobacco in the world, or create what I believe to be the best cigars in the world, if that's my aspiration, then it's also my responsibility to share that with consumers. Because Merifel is not about the insanely beautiful packaging, or Merifel is not about the insanely beautiful bands, Merifel is about what's been put together, and how it's put together, and what it's supposed to do, what it's supposed to deliver as a proposition to the consumer. All right, I got two small questions here.

Are you happy with where the direction is going that you're taking the family and the legacy? Or do you have, are you are you never satisfied? How the fuck am I supposed to answer that question? I'm sorry for the language.

Mike Sinclair: Yeah, you're good. Mike Sinclair: I think what I'm happy about is to see how excited and happy consumers are with the products. And the joy that that brings us, you know, to anybody in the company, whether it's, you know, Melissa Reinhardt, whether it's the teams, you know, sitting in Switzerland or in Brussels, Or in Africa, or whatever it may be, people are super happy, people are excited, people, a lot of people recognize what's going behind these products and they're grateful, and they express it, and that brings an enormous satisfaction to the fight we're leading, it gives a reason to the fight we're leaving. But I'm of the nature, obviously, as now you're starting to know me a little bit, never to be completely content and always to want to push things.

See, you're just gonna have to deal with that. All right, that's fair. I think that was a good enough answer. All right, one final question.

And you said this, and I'm going to try my best to get it right, even though my writing is chicken scratch. Make sure you honor the people you love while they're alive, because when they're not there anymore, it's too late. Have you honored your father? Never enough.

I think that kind of answers the last question. For sure. Man, I can't thank you enough for doing this with us. This was a great podcast, great interview, it was great to really kind of get to know you.

I mean, I went through and I listened to a bunch of your podcasts, and I don't like to, I want to know more about you. I want to know more about your family and the inner workings of things. And you really did provide that opportunity for us today, and I'm very grateful for that. So thank you so much for coming out here and spending time with us today.

I know that you're a busy man, you got a lot to do, but you still put time aside for the people that are willing to put in the effort with you. So thank you very much. I hate you. You made me open up my heart, publicly, which I don't like to do, but for some obscure reason you managed to do that.

But I also want to thank you because we are who we are for a reason, and we pursue what we want to pursue for a reason, and it's gentlemen like yourselves that are able to ask the right questions, who are also able to understand the answers. And for that, I appreciate it very much. Thank you so much again, man. I appreciate it.

All right, that's it, guys. Subtitulado por Jnkoil

Show Notes

Personal and Up close with the Meerapfel Legend