Cigar Aficionado

If you imagine a room filled with memorabilia and various collectibles, vivid colors and a contemporary aura likely aren’t the first defining characteristics to come to mind. Your imagination may be more inclined to conjure up visions of a cluttered space with a dated, rugged ambiance. But Manuel Delgado of Orlando, Florida has built a gorgeous cigar room that’s full of bright colors and trendy furnishings, yet it also doubles as a home to an assortment of collectible items and keepsakes.

Delgado, a real estate professional originally from Venezuela, built his house back in 2013. Originally there was no cigar room, and last year, Delgado remedied the initial exclusion in a fairly unique way. When the house was constructed he opted to have a detached garage, leaving a roughly 200 square-foot void between it and the main residence. “I told my wife ‘hey this is a great space for a cigar room,’” says Delgado. “She allowed me.” He conceptualized a design for the room with the help of his son, who studies architecture. By September of last year, after six months of permit approval, framing walls and adding a roof, the Casablanca Lounge, as Delgado calls it, was complete.

Delgado knew from the beginning he wanted to have a glass garage door as part of the room, offering a trendy look and flexibility depending on the weather conditions. Even so, the weather isn’t much of an issue. “If it’s super hot or super cold, it doesn’t matter,” says Delgado, and not just because of the nice Florida climate but because he has a mini-split heating and cooling system inside the room as well. There’s three entryways in total, including another glass door next to the garage door, as well as a door in the back right corner of the room that leads to Delgado’s actual garage. The front side of the room merges into Delgado’s charming back patio area. 

For ventilation, Delgado has a smoke extractor and a RabbitAir mounted to the wall. The room is lit via bright LED lights that Delgado opts for when he’s working or looking for a lighter ambiance. When it’s time to kick back, he turns on the warm, retro-style light fixture positioned on the center of the ceiling. 

The tile flooring is quite unique, and may cause you to double-take at first glance. “People think it’s just carpet and it’s not,” says Delgado. “It looks like an old vintage Moroccan or Spanish flooring.” The subdued tiling seamlessly merges into the muted, light gray-colored walls, which allow for the vivid decor and memorabilia hung throughout to pop and stand out.

The harmonious flow of the room with its many trinkets and colors is perhaps the most irable part of the whole space, especially when you consider that Delgado furnished the entire room on his own, without the help of an interior designer.

As you enter the Casablanca Lounge from the front side, where the garage door is located, you see a caramel, grain leather couch in the center of the room, accompanied by a matching-color, grain leather chair with wooden armrests. (Sometimes a second one of these is placed in the room as well.) In the corner between the couch and chair, is a towering, silver, three-level ashtray from Drew Estate that’s hard to miss. 

At the foot of the resting spots is a light brown, retro-style coffee table that Delgado is particularly fond of. It’s not just the look of the table that earns Delgado's appreciation, but the fact that it has a top level that can extend up and out, allowing him to comfortably sit while working on his laptop. As per any coffee table, a few rotating items take up the real estate atop the structure, notably including a table top cutter, Star Wars memorabilia and a few recent issues of Cigar Aficionado. 

Over on the right-hand side, mounted to the wall, sits a flat screen television, which, if we had to guess, has played its fair share of the Star Wars franchise. The television hangs above custom-made, azure blue kitchen cabinets, topped with loads of memorabilia and various trinkets. You may spot more Drew Estate merchandise, among other things, on the cabinets (and elsewhere in the lounge) which are fitting for the bold, eccentric aesthetic cultivated in this space. 

Towards the back wall, a modern retro style dresser with subdued, steel blue drawers and two glass doors, sits below the small window. In this small area, it’s quite hard to focus your full attention on any one particular item. The vinyl record player atop the dresser draws some intrigue, and seems well-suited for this room as a classic item that has seen a resurgence in recent years. Delgado specifically pointed to records from Marvin Gaye and Al Green as some of his favorites to enjoy while smoking a cigar. The contents behind the glass doors of the dresser are quite appealing as well, which includes a stack of vinyl, whisky glasses, branded cigar ashtrays and even a little statue of Carlos Fuente Jr., among other things. 

The urban, contemporary Star Wars art pieces in this area are unavoidable as well, from the Darth Vader helmet atop the dresser to the paintings on the wall, all done by the same artist, Oriana Gerez. For any true cigar smoker, however, there’s one item that is sure to immediately grab your attention, the classic cigar store Native American statue. Delgado originally found the statue via the help of the nearby Old Fashion Cigar Lounge in St. Cloud. But, when he received the statue, he found it to be mostly unpainted and quite dull-looking. Thankfully, he was soon put in touch with someone who specializes in painting such relics. “The guy came to the room, saw the colors, took it to his house and within a week I had it back with those colors,” says Delgado.

If you haven’t caught the drift by now, Delgado is quite the collector—and not just with cigars and whisky. The Orlando resident has an obvious affinity for Star Wars and the science-fiction genre as a whole. The decor was a purposeful show of fandom from Delgado, who takes his ions seriously. He is not alone either, the love for the Star Wars franchise is one he shares with his son, which also includes an extensive Star Wars Lego collection. 

The father-son duo has an impressive collection of cars as well, but with unfettered loyalty to one popular maker, Porsche. If you step into the 800-square-foot garage from the cigar room, you may need a second to reorient yourself. The vibrant, colorful ambiance is at-once transformed into that of a hardcore racing garage, complete with a black-and-white, checked floor. Plus, you may be caught in awe over Delgado’s lineup of Porsches: 1956 Porsche Speedster, 1982 Porsche 911 SC, 2019 Porsche Cayman 718, 2020 Porsche 911 Carrera S and 2022 Porsche Macan. “We’re all Porsches in the house,” says Delgado, with what almost feels like an understatement. 

While it’s easy to get lost in all the memorabilia or the beautiful cars, Delgado’s cigar, humidor and spirits collection is equally impressive, if not more so. Over on the left side of the cigar room, a pair of gorgeous, refurbished cabinets, sourced from Asia and the Pacific Rim, serve as the resting place for Delgado’s vast cigars and spirits collection. In total, he estimates he has about 15 humidors on-hand to go with more than 700 cigars. The humidors range from small in stature, holding about 25 smokes, to large 300-cigar vessels. “I don’t keep them all the way full but they are really tight right now,” says Delgado. 

His selection of fine spirits is no slouch either. The well-versed connoisseur will notice quite a few familiar favorites, from various bottles of Weller to Macallan and Johnnie Walker. Delgado keeps a balanced inventory though, including mezcal, Tequila and various types of rum. For him, it’s more than just the spirit itself. Finding the perfect pairing for a given cigar is a process Delgado thoroughly enjoys. 

During this trial-and-error process, Delgado will pick his cigar, then grab a handful of bottles from a particular spirit category he is in the mood for or thinks is best for the smoke. From here, he likes to engage in a taste-testing process, trying each pairing out until he finds the perfect companion. “Sometimes it’s just experimenting. It’s getting out there and trying it, right?” says Delgado. “That’s how you learn, that’s how you open that flavor profile.” 

Occasionally, Delgado will opt for a classic cocktail, the Old Fashioned. “We always experiment with different types,” he says. “I’ve done your regular Old Fashioned with Bourbon, I’ve done it with rum and mezcal as well.” The latter combination, though not conventional, is made with a dash of agave to serve as the sweetener. 

Narrowing down a favorite is never easy, but Delgado says some of his go-to cigar brands include La Flor de Las Antillas (or anything from My Father Cigars), Undercrown 10, Arturo Fuente, Padrón and Perdomo. Delgado also keeps Cubans on-hand, and generally has an open mind when it comes to cigars and brands. Overall, he has an extensive and diverse cigar inventory, including some real gems. But as many aficionados know, sometimes having a deep reserve of “special occasion” smokes can become overwhelming.  

“You know, every once in a while you get a special occasion where you just pop one out and smoke it,” says Delgado. “You never know when your time is up.” He likens the all-too-familiar dilemma to that of fine China collections found, yet seldomly used, in most households, or even to a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle 20 that he won at a raffle years back. “I need to open it up on a special occasion, but sometimes you’re out and you’re like ‘man what if it’s today and I’m gone, I better open that thing up,’” says Delgado, with a laugh. “So the day is coming closer to that happening.”

A cigar collection like Delgado’s isn’t built overnight. For him, it’s a process that’s been two decades in-the-making. “I started in 2003,” he says. “A buddy of mine said ‘hey, start with a small humidor, you might like it you might not, then you go from there.’” He was also inspired through his work. Delgado was in the banking industry working as an asset manager for a bank owner, of whom was quite fond of the finer, if not exotic things in life. “One day he gave me a Golf Digest and a Cigar Aficionado magazine,” says Delgado, who took a weekend to look them over before attempting to return the periodicals to the owner on Monday. “He was like ‘No, no, no. This is for you to learn, this is going to be part of your business, this is something that’s going to make you thrive. And that’s how I started with cigars.”

From that point on, cigars would morph into a personal ion of Delgado’s. “I would buy a box here and there, then all of the sudden you have five humidors, six humidors,” he says. “You think you’re going to stop but you don’t.” Nowadays, he looks to cigars and the beautiful lounge he built for socialization, personal refuge and even professional purposes. “I just dress up and walk over, here I am, that’s my office,” says Delgado, who also uses the place to sometimes host clients. “You’re bringing him to your space, that way you can create that interaction with him.”

“I always have people over, it’s just a different vibe,” says Delgado, who’s ittedly in the room most days of the week, whether alone or with company. “Everyone who sees it loves it, it’s something different.”

As remarkable as the space is, Delgado was keen not to sensationalize himself or the prospect of completing such a project. “Anyone can do it, and I think that’s the most important part.”

Do you have a cigar room worth sharing? Send us a note and some pictures at [email protected].

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