Alberto and Alejandro Turrent, owners of Nueva Matacapan de Tabacos S.A. de C.V., are the first family of Mexico's cigar industry. The father-son team not only makes Mexico's best-known cigar, Te-Amo, but is the largest grower of cigar tobacco in the country. The San Andrés maduro leaf the two men grow outside of Veracrúz is world renowned for its quality, and a variety of their tobaccos are important components in many of America's most popular premium cigar brands. Sales of the Te-Amo brand have historically been most strong in New York City, which the Turrents visit regularly. On the eve of their debut of the new A. Turrent 6 Generations brand, Alberto, 66, and Alejandro, 35, sat down in Manhattan with senior editor David Savona for a discussion about their past, present and future.
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Patriarch Alberto Turrent got a humble start in the family business, driving tobacco trucks.
David Savona: Señor Turrent, when did you begin working in the cigar business?
Alberto Turrent: November 1960. I finished school, and I went to work with my father. I was 22. I finished school in Mexico City. My parents said, "You finished your studies? Now you go to work."
Q: What was your first job at the company?
Alberto Turrent: Driving a truck, moving tobacco leaves.
Q: So your father didn't just put you in the office.
Alberto Turrent: No. He said, "Can you drive?" I was expected to drive a truck.
Q: Where?
Alberto Turrent: At the farm, moving people, moving bales of tobacco.
Q: What was the company like in 1960?
Alberto Turrent: We were exporting mostly tobacco to Europe. We began to make business with the United States after the embargo [on Cuba].
Q: What about cigars? Were you making Te-Amos at the time?
Alberto Turrent: No, we were making cigars just for the domestic market. Te-Amo came in 1966, '68.
Q: So you were growing lots of tobacco then?
Alberto Turrent: Yes, mostly tobacco leaves to Europe. Mostly maduro wrappers. Q: Are your maduro wrappers called San Andrés Negro, or San Andrés Tuxla? I've heard them called both.
Alberto Turrent: San Andrés Tuxla is the name of the town. The name of the tobacco is San Andrés Negro, or San Andrés Criollo. That is the seed that we got a long time ago. At that time, we were competing with Colombia and Brazil.
Q: So the Cuban embargo led to your company starting business in the United States, selling tobacco. Was it a big jump for your company?
Alberto Turrent: We grew more tobacco. At that time, we started to grow Sumatra seed. Originally it was San Andrés Negro only. The Sumatra [tobacco] was planted by a Dutch company. They tried to make a business in Mexico. They stayed for two or three years. They tried to get some compensation from the Mexican government. The government said no, and they left. We got the seeds from them. One day before they left, one guy [from the Dutch company] was drinking with my cousin, and he said, "We are leaving tomorrow. And we are going to destroy all the seed plants." My cousin was working at that time in San Andrés. He took some plants and he kept them.
Q: So that's how your company got that seed?
Alberto Turrent: Yes.
Q: That's a pretty good deal! When did the first Turrents grow tobacco?
Alberto Turrent: 1880. My great-grandfather.
Q: And was it cigar tobacco?
Alberto Turrent: Always. We never grew other tobacco, except, I think, during the Second World War. At that time, there was some domestic market, and they sold the fillers for Dutch cigarettes. Back then, the tax on tobacco was more important in value than gold and silver. There was a monopoly, a Spanish monopoly. In Mexico City, they had a cigar and cigarette factory, with 10,000 employees. Of course, everything was made by hand. And there was a big area for dark tobacco.
Q: Tell us about the origins of the Te-Amo cigar brand.
Alberto Turrent: That was created in 1966.
Q: Was that a big hit from the beginning?
Alejandro Turrent: No, the beginning was kind of a disaster.
Alberto Turrent: They packed two million cigars -they couldn't sell.
Q: Who was selling them?
Alberto Turrent: Te-Amo [was a separate partnership that] had a warehouse in New Jersey. [At] the beginning it was in Miami-it didn't work. They had two partners, and one of the partners moved from Miami to New York. The best sales [for Te-Amo] were in the New York area….[The New York partner] died, and we bought the company in 1972.
Q: So Te-Amo starts being sold in the New York area, and it had a lot of appeal to people.
Alberto Turrent: At one point we had 170 stores around the New York City area selling the cigars.
Q: It was always a New York cigar, right?
Alberto Turrent: Mostly a New York cigar. In the '70s, about 60 percent of our sales [of the Te-Amo brand] came from New York.
Q: How much did they cost then?
Alberto Turrent: Eighty cents.
Q: It was a different world for cigars then. Alejandro, when did you get into the business?
Alejandro Turrent: I [officially] got into the business around 1998. I was 25.
Q: Now did you drive a truck at first too?
Alberto Turrent: No. [Laughs.] He went right into the factory.
Alejandro Turrent: I used to do a little bit of everything. When I was in university, I went to Monterrey [in northeastern Mexico]. There was no market for cigars in Monterrey, really. So I started to ask for some cigar boxes from the factory, and I would start to visit some retailers, and I started selling cigars. The cigars started to move. When I would need money, I would go and ask [the stores] for the money in advance.
Alberto Turrent: He wasn't supposed to collect the money! [Laughs.] When we went to collect on the bills, these owners would say, "We paid in advance!" [Laughs.] Enditem
