Fall 2020 PCA Magazine

34 PCA The Magazine | AUTUMN 2020 PREMIUMCIGARS.ORG questioning his future in the industry. He knewhe had to offer a higher echelon of product to win shelf space in premiumcigar shops everywhere, not just golf courses inFlorida. In 2000Rubin partneredwith fellow southFlorida businessman RalphMontero, himself an up- and-comer striving for success in cigars. The relationship clicked; Montero is today executive vice president at Alec Bradley. It was hewho introducedRubin to cigarmakerHendrik (“Henke”) Kelner, owner of theOccidental Cigar factory in theDominican Republic andmanufacturer for Davidoff andAvo. Here, then, was a source of top-flight product. Rubin used the last of his ready cash to secure an initial order of 1,000 cigars, which he thenmailed unsolicited in packets of two apiece to 500merchants, “with no price list.” Follow-up telephone calls yieldedmore than 250new accounts. Rubin had a successful line onhis hands, and named it Occidental Reserve inhomage to HenkeKelner’s factory. Other lines followed. In the early 2000s came a cigar called Maxx, one of the industry’s early offerings in larger-sized ring gauges. Then came Trilogy, a three-sided cigar available in three blends.With its bright packaging and unique shape, Trilogywas a game-changer for the company. People responded well to the soft-three-sided concept. They liked being able to set the cigar on a flat surface and not have it roll around. The unique shape gave the cigar visibility, pizzazz, cachet. Rubin recounts that the Trilogy “put us in hundreds and hundreds of stores.” The Alec Bradley companywasmoving from strength to strength, exhibiting year-over-year growth in revenues and product offerings. Rubin also has a longstanding relationshipwith the Endemaño family andwith their Danlí, Honduras, factory Fabrica de Tabacos Raíces Cubanas S. de R.L.—Raíces Cubanas for short. (Alec Bradley reportedly has bought asmuch as 90 percent of the factory’s production.) WorkingwithRaíces Cubanas, the company brought a unique regional leaf to its product line: Trojes tobacco, which is from the Jalapa Valley, only on the Honduran side of the border. It offers the sweetness of Jalapa Valley tobacco, with an intensity of flavor thatmakes it a perfect blending component for cigars of great distinction. Rubin recalls: “The Trojes tobacco delivered flavors and complexities I had never experienced before. The taste was incredible, and the blending process began.” And so the cigar RubinnamedTempus came to be. Rubin says, “Tempus is Latin for time, and it took time to learn, grow, blend and age.” Introduced in 2007, Tempus was Alec Bradley’s first foray into the heavier-bodied flavor profile that was gaining in popularity. Rubin states that “Tempus would eventually rate a 94 in Cigar Aficionado, becoming Alec Bradley’s first ofmany Top 25 Cigars of the Year.” In 2017 the Tempus tookNo. 5. Rubin says that out of all his cigars, “the Tempus is closest tomy heart, in terms of what it has done for our company.” Another cigar that bears mentioning is the company’s super-premiumFine& Rare series, nowa decade in production, which gained fame and accolades for offering a stunning 10-tobacco blend. But it was the Prensado that really set the company on course for superstardom.When in 2011 Alec Bradley’s Prensado Churchill wonCigar Aficionado’s No. 1 Cigar of the Year, a buying frenzy followed—and also a struggle to copewith demand. So many orders flowed in, and the demands on the factory grew so arduous, that for a time quality suffered. Rubinhad to revisit and recalibrate every process in his supply chain, fromseed to manufacturing to transportation. It took hima couple of fraught years to get a handle on every new problemthat hyperfast growth imposed. But at length those problems were conquered, and Rubin’s customers stuckwithhim. Today the innovation continues. InOctober of this year, the company announced release of Project 40Maduro, a follow-up to its critically acclaimedProject 40 line. Produced at J. Fuego Cigar Co. inEstelí, themedium- plus bodied blend features a SanAndrés wrapper, Brazilian Habano binder and all Nicaraguan fillers. Project 40Maduro is set to begin shipping globally as this article goes to print. The past year has ushered in another headline development: If the Rubins did not start out as a cigar family, they certainly are one now. AlanRubin’s sons Alec and Bradley, nowgrown up and out of college, have joined their father in the business and launched their own brand—Alec&BradleyCigars (A&B)—under the Alec Bradley A L E C B R A D L E Y C I G A R S ALAN RUBIN AND RALPH MONTERO