CIGAR LEGEND JOSÉ O. PADRÓN PASSES AWAY, AGED 91

[nayslayer]

What a legend, never met the man, but smoked many of his cigars. RIP

https://www.cigarjournal.com/cigar-legen...y-aged-91/

[Tonto]

Damn    


RIP

[EvilAsh]

Wow, sad news.

RIP

[Jimmie the Mum]

I met him twice at events. very personable, hell of a nice guy and him & his family produce excellent stogies.
One of the only vendors who don't have a sales force.

Sad day indeed.
From Cigar Aficionado:
José Orlando Padrón, the founder of the Padrón Cigar brand, died early this morning. The legendary cigarmaker, who had run Padrón Cigars Inc. for 53 years, was surrounded by his family. He was 91 years old.
“He died peacefully, he didn’t suffer,” said his son Jorge, who has worked alongside his father since he was a young man.
“He was a true icon,” said Marvin R. Shanken, editor and publisher of Cigar Aficionado magazine. “A much loved leader and devoted family man who was uncompromising in his passion for cigars.”
Born in 1926 in Consolación del Sur, in Pinar del Río, Cuba, José Orlando Padrón was raised on his family’s tobacco farm. “My grandmother had a little table in her house where she would make cigars for my grandfather, and for the entire family,” Padrón said during an interview with Cigar Aficionado in 2014. “Two things they were never without—wine and cigars. As a young boy, I saw that in my house. My grandfather every day would wake up, and every time I saw him he was looking at a cigar. Rolling it in his hand. Always touching tobacco.”
Padrón left Cuba in 1961 and after some time in Spain came to the United States later that same year. After trying various forms of work, in March 1964 he rented a tiny storefront on West Flagler Street in Miami and applied for the permits to start a cigar factory. On September 8, 1964, Padrón Cigars was open for business. He had one cigar roller.
Those early smokes were quite modest, and Padrón sold his wares for 25 cents apiece, targeting the many cafeterias in Miami where Cuban expatriates like him smoked a cigar (or a few) after a meal. Sales began to increase when he introduced a fuma, a longer, more rustic cigar made with an extended pigtail tip.
In 1967, Padrón imported his first crop of Nicaraguan tobacco, a move that would change his company forever.
“In 1968, that's the first year I started using Nicaraguan tobacco in my cigars,” Padrón said in 2014. “I went from 479,000 cigars to more than 800,000 cigars a year.” He was so enamored with Nicaraguan tobacco that he opened a cigar factory in Nicaragua in 1970.