Thank God it wasn’t a tie. Or a watch. Or cologne or even a toolset. No, it’s hard to imagine where Anto Mahroukian, president of JM Tobacco, would be these days if he had purchased anything other than a cigar to give as a birthday present to his father, John. Back in the mid-1990s, premium handmade cigars were all the rage, with specialized retail stores seemingly popping up everywhere, and bars and restaurants adding cigar selections to their menus. What was all the excitement about? Anto, who wanted to give his father a special gift, decided to find out, unwittingly setting into motion a family business that is closing in on its own 30th birthday.
As Anto, now in his mid-40s—about the same age of John when he received that birthday cigar—tells the story, John was so enamored with the gift that he wanted to enjoy cigars more often. “My father really enjoyed it to the point that he asked me to buy a box,” Anto explains. “I told him the price. And I think that’s when the light kind of turned on in his head and he said, ‘Wait a second here; we can do something.’”
That something turned out to be JM Tobacco, a Los Angeles-based company that has gained a reputation for creating luxurious yet affordable handmade premium cigars that still please aficionados almost three decades later.
John pondered how he could get into the premium cigar business. The mid-1990s were the halcyon days of the premium cigar boom, and seemingly everyone wanted to cash in on the craze. A lot of Don Nobodies traveled to the Dominican Republic, Honduras and other cigar-producing areas to buy tobacco and pump out cigars. Fine quality tobacco was becoming scarce and many cigar producers looked to safeguard their own stockpiles. It was becoming increasingly difficult to get into the industry…unless you knew someone.
At the time, John owned a jewelry business and had a gold chain factory in the Dominican Republic, which his brother ran for him. Leveraging connections inside the country, John found a cigarmaker willing to create 10,000 cigars. Reasoning that if the cigar company he wanted to start didn’t work out, he’d have enough to enjoy for the rest of his life, John sent Anto to the D.R. to make JM Tobacco a reality.
“It was just an eye-opening experience for me,” Anto recalls. “The way they tasted the tobacco, the way they blended the tobacco—I had never seen anything like that in my life. There was a lot of information being thrown at me all at once, but it was very exciting stuff, and almost 30 years later one of the things that I love most about cigars is that I am still learning.”
The result of Anto’s trip was Española Cigars, which he and his father debuted at the 1996 RTDA Show in Cincinnati, Ohio, with Española Connecticut. The name is a brainchild of Anto, who was entrusted by his father to come up with all the designs for the cigars and packaging. Inspired by the name of the island that the D.R. shares with Haiti—Hispaniola—the Española Connecticut line was immediately successful because it catered to both the experienced cigar smoker and to those who were just starting out on their cigar smoking adventures. It was well-constructed (not always a given at the time) and it was very flavorful without an accompanying hefty price tag. It became clear to both Mahroukians that JM Tobacco had a real future.
“We were fresh,” Anto remembers. “We didn’t know anything. So, we listened to our customers. And my dad was business-savvy. He saw a hot product and he stomped on it. We didn’t know that this business was much more than having good cigars, but that it is a relationship business.”
And it was relationships that created JM’s second cigar. Retailers at JM’s first RTDA Show constantly asked if the company had a Maduro cigar. Taking direction from all those questions, it was clear what JM needed to add to its lineup. But getting tobacco in the Dominican Republic was becoming even more difficult. To solve the problem, John booked a flight to Connecticut and directly visited a tobacco farm where he bought enough Broadleaf to introduce Española Maduro at the very next RTDA Show.
“Dad wouldn’t take no for an answer when he was visiting that farm,” Anto explains. “We really liked that Broadleaf tobacco and it became the wrapper for our second cigar. We had a very smooth and creamy smoke with Española Connecticut. And then we had something that was medium with the Española Maduro. What we needed next was a cigar that was medium-plus to full-bodied.”
But before JM Tobacco would add another cigar to the Española lineup, the premium cigar bubble burst. The public moved on to another craze and a lot of those Don Nobodies disappeared. JM Tobacco pivoted its focus and began producing value-priced cigars, including: JM’s Dominican, JM’s Nicaraguan and JM’s Honeys, along with Zoidian cigars.
It would be almost 25 years before JM Tobacco revisited its Española line with the introduction of Española Year of the Dragon in 2024. Unlike almost all the other “Year of” cigars, JM’s Year of the Dragon will live on beyond 2024 as it will become the third permanent expression in the Española line as the Española Corojo (see review).
Made by the same master blender that JM Tobacco has been working with since the introduction of Española Connecticut back in 1996, Española Corojo extends the company’s reputation for producing fantastic premium cigars at not-so-premium prices. Española Corojo is forecast to retail for around $12.50—similar in price to the Connecticut and Maduro versions.
Combining an Ecuadorean-grown Corojo wrapper with a Mexican San Andrés Maduro binder and Dominican filler tobaccos, including Ligero, JM Tobacco’s Española Corojo is a full-bodied assault on the senses that still manages to balance the spicy creaminess of the wrapper with the inherent sweetness of the binder.
“I love it, and it’s become my favorite cigar,” Anto explains. “I don’t want to see it go away, and neither do my retailers. We had never done a limited-edition cigar before, so it’s ironic that the Dragon is going to become part of our regular lineup. I guess we still haven’t done a limited edition!”
And the company hasn’t needed to—almost 30 years in the business can attest to that. In an industry often associated with luxury and exclusivity, JM Tobacco stands out as a champion of the everyday cigar smoker by focusing on quality, consistency, and affordability.
– Story by Stephen A. Ross. Photos courtesy of JM Tobacco.
This story first appeared in PCA The Magazine, Volume 4, 2024. To receive a copy of this magazine you must be a current member of PCA. Join or renew today at premiumcigars.org/membership.