PCA Magazine Winter 2020

PREMIUMCIGARS.ORG WINTER 2020 | PCA The Magazine 27 appears connected to sources of inspiration passed along to him by loved ones or other figures he has looked up to. Only a year before passing, his grandfather introduced young Garcia to fine cigars, and predicted the experience would go toward shaping the boy’s life. When Garcia was 16, an uncle handed him a copy of the famous bestselling book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, and reading it confirmed Garcia in his entrepreneurial bent. His stepfather hailed fromAntigua, Guatemala, and Garcia fell in love with the place from his first visit. He took inspiration from it—thus the name of his company. Before his launch, Garcia’s personal go-to smokes became Padron, Oliva, Plasencia and T H E B L E N D Arturo Fuente, and Garcia took inspiration from those as well. “Without a doubt,” he says, “our cigars fit into the profile of the cigars I have admired through the years.” Garcia admits, “Breaking into this industry is not easy.” Nor has he taken shortcuts in his entry. “I’ve been around tobacco for a long time,” he says. “I started getting involved in cigarmaking on my travels through Nicaragua. I went into the fields and warehouses and got my hands dirty finding out everything I could about how a cigar is created. I learned to work the leaf, even how to de-vein leaves by hand. And I found that this kind of manual labor, this kind of attention to industry practices, was very educational. My aimwas to “I started getting involved in cigarmaking on my travels through Nicaragua. I went into the fields and warehouses and got my hands dirty finding out everything I could about how a cigar is created.”