Tasting Note

If the American Dream seems like an antiquated idea reserved for late-19th-century immigrants in history books, then consider the more recent story of My Father Cigars. Company founder José “Pepín” Garcia emigrated from Cuba to the United States in 2002, bringing with him a rare skill—the ability to roll the type of Cuban-style cigar that many in this country hadn’t seen since before the Cuban embargo. Eventually, Garcia ended up in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood and opened up a small factory called El Rey de Los Habanos. Success came quickly. In just a few years, he outgrew the Miami location and expanded to Nicaragua, where Garcia increased production and had easier access to the Nicaraguan tobaccos he was accustomed to using. But Pepín didn’t do this alone. Both his son Jaime and daughter Janny were instrumental in growing the company, working with him in Miami and Nicaragua. In 2008, Jaime surprised his father with a blend he’d been working on in secret. He presented it to Pepín as a dedication to all he’d done as a mentor and as a parent. The cigar was sentimentally named My Father, and the Garcias opened a grander factory in Nicaragua with the same name the following year. There have been plenty of spinoff brands from My Father—La Gran Oferta, La Opulencia and Le Bijou 1922 (the 2015 Cigar of the Year). In 2016, the Garcias released My Father The Judge, a bold, full-bodied cigar packaged in boxes with lithographic art resurrected from 1905. With the exception of the dark, Sumatra-seed Ecuadoran wrapper, all the tobacco comes from farms across Nicaragua that the Garcias spent many years obtaining. As is typical of Cuban construction, the cigar is made with two binders, one Corojo and one Criollo. The tobacco comes from at least three regions: the La Bonita Two farm in Jalapa, El Pedrero in Estelí and San Rafael in Namanji. The Grand Robusto’s thick ring gauge allows for a thorough exploration of Nicaragua’s tobacco appellations, making for a cigar that is rich and complex. It shows an ample core of earth, toast and wood along with finer nutty details and sweet undercurrents all amounting to a bold smoke that resonates with balance and satisfaction. Every puff is certainly a cross section of Nicaragua’s finest soils, but beyond that, it also affirms a ion for tobacco, a strong work ethic and an even stronger belief in the power of family.