Many people grow up around cigars, but it takes a special person to revive a legacy. That’s what Juan Lugo of Don Doroteo Cigars did. He smoked his first “intentional” cigar while deployed in Iraq. But Lugo took the seed of his idea back to his roots in the Dominican Republic. Lugo spoke with Cigar Life Guy about meeting his partner through cryptocurrency investing. He shared his appreciation for the beauty of harvesting tobacco. Giving back remains his primary goal in the cigar industry.

Juan Lugo: First Premium Cigar Experience

Cigar Life Guy: Tell me about your first premium cigar experience.

Juan Lugo: The first official cigar that I intended to smoke — I say “intended” because I have had cigars in my family since birth, and I have always been around them. So, the first time I actually smoked as an adult was when I was deployed in the United States Air Force.

I was in the military police, and I was in Iraq in 2009. It was a dry base. So you couldn’t drink alcohol, which was my vice of choice at the time, but they did have tobacco. You could chew tobacco, smoke cigars, and you could smoke cigarettes. I went straight for cigars.

When I saw it in this little shop, I immediately felt nostalgic. So, I gravitated toward the cigars. At the time, I wasn’t really an aficionado or connoisseur. So, I just grabbed some Montecristos from Cuba. I wound up smoking some gems because there was no embargo like here in the States.

Then, I was nineteen years old. I had one day off a week, usually on Sundays. And I would go into this abandoned hut. It was a bunker, but we turned it into a hangout spot.

The base was called Al-Assad, and it was one of Saddam Hussein’s primary bases in Iraq. We found this abandoned bunker, took some lawn chairs, and set them up in a circle. That was our go-to spot.

We played dominoes. We couldn’t drink any alcohol. However, we had non-alcoholic beer — just for the ritual of it — and we would smoke cigars.

Cigar Business with Juan Lugo

Cigar Life Guy: You were the lone family member interested in returning to the cigar business. Tell us a little about your decision and partnership with Brandon Dallman and Jeff Moss.

Juan Lugo: After the military, I went into tech. I was stationed in California. So, I used my GI Bill and got a degree in business from San Jose State. Then, I gravitated toward the entrepreneurial spirit and mindset.

I picked up a gig in cybersecurity and then worked with AI (Artificial Intelligence) before it was a buzzword. But I had no idea what it really was, to be honest (laughs), even when I was working with it. Conceptualizing it was nuts back then. I kept hearing other buzzwords, like cryptocurrency and Bitcoin. So, I wound up dipping my toe into that in late 2017. I worked numerous side jobs so I could invest in the stock market and crypto in particular.

It took a few years, but in 2020, I finally started making some money. In the midst of the pandemic, I really had a great year investing. Investing led me to random chat rooms and forums like Telegram, WhatsApp, and Discord. I met a lot of interesting individuals — random investors, one of whom was my future cigar partner, Brandon Dallman.

It wasn’t until 2021 that we had made some great gains. A few of us were like, “Can we finally meet up in person and not be weird internet chat room people?” (laughs). So we decided to meet in San Juan, Puerto Rico, at a little beachfront hotel.

The group had business there, but we figured we might as well have a little fun. I had no idea that anyone in the group even liked cigars. I was expecting a bunch of typical nerdy-type basement dwellers. Instead, it was a great group of guys from all different walks of life. Brandon, a good old boy from Nebraska, walks out with a box of cigars. He sits next to me and hands them out.

No one in the group knew cigar etiquette, so I was quick to help with cutting and lighting. Brandon and I got to talking. Then he asked if I had any ties to the cigar industry. And I said, “Do I?” I told him my grandfather’s story about how he’d been growing tobacco since 1936 and his connection to La Aurora.

We talked about what was next for us. Did we want to continue the investing game? It’s a soulless industry. I made some great relationships in investing, but it wasn’t fulfilling other than the monetary side. It’s the polar opposite of what the cigar industry is.

I decided I wanted to make a change. I told Brandon I had been working on a business plan to revive my grandfather’s legacy. We spent the entirety of that trip smoking cigars and talking about what things would look like.

When I got home, I told my wife, who was pregnant with twins. I said I thought it was time to take the plunge, and I wanted to quit my secure career in tech. I was going to walk away from the “golden handcuffs,” as they call them, and pursue the journey of an entrepreneur.

That was the beginning of Don Doroteo. The first thing I told Brandon was that we needed to make sure we were honoring my grandfather and his legacy. It wasn’t cigar-making. It was tobacco harvesting. My grandfather harvested and sold to La Aurora exclusively. It’s also what I wanted to do. So, the cigars were just a byproduct of being in that industry. Nine months after that trip to Puerto Rico, we had our first harvest.

Merging New Blends With Cigar Tradition

Cigar Life Guy: Tell us how you merge tradition with creating new blends.

Juan Lugo: In other words, what’s your differentiator from a business standpoint? Obviously, there’s passion behind creating a business in this industry, especially when you have family ties. But you have to ask yourself the real tough questions. Is it a viable venture? That is the world Brandon and I came from.

We had to assess and vet a lot of companies we were potentially going to invest in. What is the viability of this company? What’s their product? What’s their differentiator? Entering the cigar industry, we looked at it from that lens. As much as it was a passion product, we also had to make sure we weren’t just throwing our money into a dumpster fire.

We had talked to many boutique owners and others in the industry. And we didn’t want to follow a set blueprint. Instead, we wanted to create our own path. Many people stop where they feel like “this is the road to success. I need to have five different blends.” That’s the mindset of the average aficionado who wants to take this on.

I didn’t care about the cigar part initially. I wanted to grow tobacco. I’m a city boy from New York (laughs). That was the next challenge I wanted to take on.

I fell in love with working in the soil and working with the people there. Building something tangible. When you talk about the fruits of your labor, in the investor world, it’s all 1’s and 0’s. There’s no human connection. Whereas in the cigar world, it’s 100% the opposite.

There’s so much fulfillment from the harvest. Then, the big day is when the buyer from La Aurora shows up. They have to qualify all of your tobacco. You’re just crossing your fingers that you have tobacco in there that cuts the binder. And if you’re lucky enough, you get some for the wrapper, which is easier said than done.

We haven’t been able to do that yet. But I’m proud to say that since our first harvest, most of it has been binder quality. That was a feather in our cap immediately. We wanted to make sure we were bringing forth everything we could.

Any schmuck with a wallet can go into a factory and say, “Hey, I want to make a cigar for my ego and put my name on it.“ Any factory will give you numerous blends. It’s business. But I was really serious about this. Putting my grandfather’s name on it held weight.

From Seed to Smoke

Cigar Life Guy: You take pride in doing things the right way. What is the most important aspect of creating a cigar from seed that every cigar smoker should know?

Juan Lugo: The Salt of the Earth took a long time during the brainstorming phase with the team. That is where Jeff Moss comes in. We started looking online and thinking about what the award-winning cigar looked like.

Who is the right person to hire for our team? We had no idea, so we started searching online. That led us to a page with a hodgepodge of boxes and ring designs. It turned out to be the award-winning Jeff Moss from Alec Bradley. We cold-called this guy and talked for about an hour. He told me flat out, “I don’t make rings. I build brands.“ After that, I wanted him to visit the farm.

I brought him there for the harvest in February of 2022. He took one look and said, “You built this in nine months?“ At that moment, he said, “I’m in. Let’s go.“ He was at a crossroads himself. His contract with Alec Bradley was ending, and he was thinking of moving on.

The brainstorming phase focused on what this should look like. It felt like building a brand. We were creating a story completely from scratch. Brandon and Jeff would be there alongside me, working on the variations of tobacco we wanted to use.

Aside from that, it was more about what story you want to tell. That’s where Salt of the Earth comes from.

Salt of the Earth is what I think of when I think of the type of man my grandfather was. That’s the type of man I am. That’s the type of man I want to be known as. I don’t want to veer away from his teachings and my upbringing. So that was the name. That’s the brand. But then I thought, now, what’s the blend?

I wanted to dig deep into the Dominican roots. One thing that was near and dear to me was the Andullo. My grandfather used to harvest tobacco and process it into Andullo. The beautiful part is that to get a final product, you have to let it sit for a couple of years.

The typical farmer in the Dominican Republic will do it for a year and a half. Then, they’ll sell them at any local grocery store. That’s what the common man smokes in the Dominican Republic. They chew it as well. So it’s pipe tobacco and chewing tobacco. That’s what my grandfather produced his entire life.

In the 50s, he opened up a farmer’s market in Santiago. It’s still there today. Alongside tobacco, he had dairy products, eggs, and produce. The first cigar I ever smoked had Andullo tobacco. My grandfather used to walk around with a little pipe filled with Andullo tobacco. And he would roll his own box-pressed cigars with Andullo. It’s not a delicacy there.

I learned to look at Andullo tobacco in a new way. I never saw it at a PCA. It never appealed to the American consumer. I wanted to reinvent that.

We landed on two blends that eventually became the Salt of the Earth: the Cameroon Piedra Viva and the Corojo Piedra Angular.

When it comes to blending cigars, we’re not trying to do anything trendy. As creative director, Jeff Moss has focused on making sure we don’t lose that legacy within the brand. All the visuals, the ring, and the PCA booth must reflect the legacy. The magazine advertisements also need to honor that tradition. Everything must include a modern twist.

I don’t want to be a boutique company that feels that it needs to come out with the latest and greatest every year. There are only so many ways to roll a cigar. If we’re here to make money, we’re here for the wrong reasons. If I wanted to make money, I’d go back to crypto. Making cigars is a passion project for me. I want to make sure that we’re putting everything into every blend. We’re making what we love.

Cigar Farm and the Fair Distribution of Profits

Cigar Life Guy: You take pride in the fair distribution of profits. Can you explain what that looks like?

Juan Lugo: I can say with confidence that most cigar manufacturers don’t own their farms or harvest their own tobacco. That may sound controversial, but when you go into these countries, people can get away with more than they can in the United States. I’m merged between both worlds: a U.S. veteran and citizen. I also have strong ties to my Dominican Republic heritage. Because of that, we do a few things differently.

Aside from having a fully working farm year-round, we don’t just hire people seasonally. That’s controversial with many tobacco manufacturers that have plants in Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico. We hire people year-round. We don’t fire people because the season’s over, and let people fend for themselves and their families for six months. I don’t think that’s right. What I decided to do was farm-to-fork.

We had this extremely fertile land in the Dominican Republic. As it is, we can’t grow tobacco year-round. Mother Nature doesn’t permit it, but crop rotation is good for the nutrients in the soil. So, we rotate crops and keep the soil rich. It also allows me to keep my folks employed.

We have been growing squash. I hired my cousin as the director of operations at the farm. He spoke to local supermarkets to find out what produce was needed most, something that would not disturb the nutrients in the soil for tobacco. We’re on our third harvest of squash. We usually do our tobacco harvest in February.

I have a big ceremonial event. I invite all the local workers. We sit together, throw a feast, and party. There’s music, food, and obviously cigars. Then we do it again when we have our squash harvest in August. We invite all the families.

Our company is a family in and of itself. We have a big cookout with a traditional Dominican stew called Sancocho that incorporates a lot of squash. That’s the first step. That is something that hasn’t come up in some of these cigar-related interviews. One of my personal goals is to give back to the community. That’s important to me. Keeping people employed full-time year-round is step two.

Step three is setting up ways to help kids in impoverished countries. We want them to access things considered foundational in the United States. These essentials aren’t easily available in other places. We’re talking about everything from auxiliary English to  STEM. We’re also talking about anything related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. I’m passionate about it because I’ve seen the difference it makes. I want to do that through our company.

Passions Beyond Cigars

Cigar Life Guy: What is one of your passions outside of cigars? What would people not know about you?

Juan Lugo: I just answered a lot of that in the last question (laughs)! I’m open on social media, so you’ll see all of my announcements there. Shooting a bow or shooting guns are some of the fun things I learned in the military. As it pertains to business, it’s difficult to go into PCA as a boutique guy and make major dents in the universe. For me, it’s about giving back to my community in the Dominican Republic and my family.

I was finally able to take my kids to the farm. My twins were born at the same time as the company. It’s been symbolic of how the company went from its infancy to its crawling phase. I had a dream for my wife and kids; I wanted them to visit the farm. I imagined them walking three minutes to their grandparents’ house. Over the summer, we were able to do that. Seeing it in action was so great. That’s what it’s about for me. I truly love the country and giving back. That’s what our company is about.

Follow Juan on Instagram and check out the latest from Don Doroteo Cigars.

Photo credit: Juan Lugo