PCA Magazine Winter 2020

22 PCA The Magazine | WINTER 2020 PREMIUMCIGARS.ORG RATELLO CIGARS may be a relative newcomer to an industry of cigar dynasties but you’d be hard-pressed to find any cigar lover who hasn’t heard of Fratello and met the impossibly nice, impossibly tall (6 feet, 9 inches) owner, Omar de Frias. Fratello, meaning “brother” in Italian, is aptly named, as de Frias treats everyone he meets like a long- lost brother. It also doesn’t hurt that de Frias got his undergraduate degree in hotel management and marketing. Great customer service is in his blood, but that’s only one slice of what makes this company so memorable. Initially launched in 2013, Fratello began as a side job for de Frias, whose day job was as a NASA project analyst. He would dedicate nights and weekends to Fratello events but recently decided to leave his job at NASA to focus full time on his passion of cigars. De Frias dove in headfirst, reading all he could about tobacco. He visited Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and Honduras to meet and talk with everyone he could about the cigar industry. While in the Dominican Republic, he met Jose Blanco, who introduced him to the cigar makers at Joya de Nicaragua, the manufacturer BY BR I AN LEDTKE The Blend F Fratello Navetta Inverso