Cigar World's Interview with Pedro Gomez of Drew Estate Part Two

Cigar World's Interview with Pedro Gomez of Drew Estate Part Two

Hopefully, you have read Part One of our Interview with Pedro Gomez from Drew Estate, but if you have not, please click here and start in order. For those of you who have already read part one, we pick up with Pedro to discuss his favorite cigars and cigar festivals as well as his experience with Blackened.

Jean: Speaking of smoking cigars and enjoying them. What is your favorite time of day to smoke a cigar?

Pedro: I think it's going to be at night. Everything is done, there is nothing else to do. It is me and my cigar because, you know, with a cigar, you must have the time. You cannot smoke in a rush, and with a good cigar and having the time, you're going to be living the time of your life. 

Jean: What is your favorite thing to drink when you're smoking a cigar? 

Pedro: I would say bourbons. I like bourbon a lot. I used to drink a lot of rum because in Nicaragua we have Flor de Caña, which is a well-known rum in the rum world. However, rum is not a big thing here in the United States. Besides, Captain Morgan, most people don't know anything else about rum, you know? But when it comes to bourbons and whiskeys, bourbon is very rich. Bourbons and scotch are very different. With bourbons, I find myself with a palette full of flavors that come from the wood that they use to ferment those bourbons, and you open the flavor of the cigars. I like that a lot if I'm smoking a mild or mild to medium cigar. If I am not drinking a bourbon, I might go with a lager beer, which is very tasty but doesn’t overpower the taste of the cigar.

Jean: If you had to pick one Drew Estate cigar that you could smoke for the rest of your life, which one would it be? 

Pedro: Oh my god, for the rest of my life or any given time?

Jean: If you were stranded on an island and you could bring only one kind of cigar with you, so yes for the rest of your life, and without a chance of being rescued.

Pedro: Being stranded on an island, huh? I would say my go-to when it comes to the rest of my days, would be Undercrown 10. The Undercrown 10 is a nice medium to full-body smoke. It has high-prime Mexican wrappers. It has a beautiful, rich binder from Connecticut, which is the Broadleaf, and when it comes to the filler, it is a hundred percent Nicaraguan.

 So, what I really like about that cigar is the Mexican hot chocolate notes that I get out of every single puff. Who doesn't like chocolate? The cigar itself and the blend give you that experience, and it gives you that smooth transition of flavor notes in your palate. It's not that the cigar is infused because it's not, right? It's a traditional medium to full body smoke, but the tobaccos that we use in the Drew Estate factory in Esteli, Nicaragua, have been well-aged, and therefore the tobacco is ready to give you what tobacco is all about.

Jean: Drew Estate recently did Blackend with James Hetfield from Metallica and now the newest blend, S84 Shade to Black. What was that experience like? 

Pedro: I think you know everything happens with time. I'm glad that you asked the question because the other day I was cruising around social media, and I saw a picture from Metallica that they posted on Instagram of James Hetfield having a cigar. The photo was from the mid-90s, which was right around the same year that Jonathan Drew founded Drew Estate, and Metallica became huge in the music industry. When this opportunity came up, it came from our good friend, Rod Dietrich, who is the master distiller of Blackened.

Rod Dietrich has expansive experience when it comes to bourbons. Back in the day Jonathan (Drew) had a liquor company, and he ended up meeting a lot of great people from the liquor industry.  One of those people was Rod Dietrich, and it was Rod Dietrich who brought the Metallica collaboration to Drew Estate. That's how the whole thing was born. 

With James Hetfield being a huge cigar guy, he always wanted to have a cigar brand, and with Drew Estate being a very unusual premium cigar company, Drew Estate doesn’t necessarily follow tradition. We follow the core of Drew Estate, which is the Rebirth of Cigars. So, that means that we always think outside of the box. And it's not only about tradition when you make cigars, when you blend cigars, and create a brand, but when it comes to what Drew Estate is all about, Drew stays an urban, stylish, premium cigar company that connects the bridge between Brooklyn, New York and Estelli, Nicaragua. 

Jean: Yeah, a unique take for cigars. You don't necessarily always see a tie to metal/rock music in the industry like that. I was really impressed and thought it was super cool. 

Pedro: Thank you. 

Jean: If you had to pick some of your favorite festivals that you guys pop up at, what are some of your favorite ones to go to? 

Pedro: Well, you know, from Drew Estate, obviously the Barn Smoker. Drew Estate is the only cigar company that has these experiential events available in the industry and right here in the United States. I enjoy a local festival for us here in South Florida called the Gray Smoke. It's an amazing cigar festival. It's more than a thousand people, I think it's around 1,200 people. All of them are end consumers, and everything is set up by smoking. Abe and his crew set up an amazing festival every year, and every year, they go higher and bigger and better and more beautiful. Another one that I would like to give a beautiful shout-out is the Rocky Mountain Cigar Festival in Colorado. I saw you remember last year. It was brief, but you were just coming in. 

Jean: Yes, that was my first time at Rocky Mountain, and I loved it!

Pedro: Absolutely, because at the end of the day, you know, it's about keeping the industry alive. Yes. People come to those festivals. They’ve got their food and their drinks, and they smoke a cigar that they haven't tried. If there is a new cigar smoker, then they see that there is something else out there that they haven’t heard about yet.

And that ends our time with Pedro for our second round of interviews. We have our third and final interview with Pedro to wrap up our time with Drew Estate, which is coming soon, so stay tuned and make sure to follow our social media channels so you don’t miss the final interview!