People called Steve Bartell crazy for getting into the cigar business, but when you have lived the cigar life since you were a young child it’s anything but crazy. Bartell, owner and president of Molon Labe Cigars, is all in and “intent” on making his brand global. He talked with Cigar Life Guy about his start in the business and how he went from selling cigars on the Internet to building a line that has perfected the “trifecta” – pairing in-house coffee and whiskey exclusively to Molon Labe’s cigar portfolio.
First Premium Cigar Experience
Cigar Life Guy: Tell me about your first premium cigar experience
Steve Bartell: It’s funny I was just telling this story to one of my customers. My grandfather was a cigar smoker and used to sit under grapes- he had a grape arbor in the back of his house- with a cigar and homemade wine. I remember loving the smell as a little kid. He’d let me take a puff off his cigar when I was a little kid. I learned to love it. Fast forward to when I was about 18 years old and in college, and I was fortunate enough that my first real cigar experience was smoking a real Cuban cigar, a Romeo and Julieta Vintage III. I was hooked. From that moment on, I loved smoking really good cigars. So I started smoking cigars at a fairly young age.
As I got older, I joined a cigar club. I lived in Phoenix, Arizona in my twenties. I don’t know if you know Varton of Ambassador Cigar in Scottsdale, but I joined the VIP program and was the youngest guy by twenty-five years. He took me under his wing with all the old-timers in the backroom in the VIP lounge. I got to smoke a lot of great cigars as a young man. I was introduced to some rare limited-edition cigars and started working my way through the premium brands in the humidor. That was the beginning for me.
Getting into the Cigar Business
Cigar Life Guy: You have been smoking cigars for a long time. How did you get into the cigar industry? What did you do before and how does it help inform what you do now?
Steve Bartell: I was in the tech business for 35 years. I never intended to get into the cigar business. I love cigars and I got to smoke a lot of great cigars with my customers when I was in tech and traveling all over the world. When I was fifty years old, I ran into a family that owned some land and was growing and making these amazing cigars. I had been smoking the cigars for five years and loved them so much I went to the family and told them I’d like to make a brand out of it- a limited edition, reserve brand. So it started as a pet project- a passion project for cigars.
That’s what got me into the business. That was Molon Labe. The Molon Labe brand really started eight years ago, but went to market five years ago. It was a limited reserve. We had five vitolos all the same blend- a true puro. Nowadays that word is a bit bastardized. “Puro” to Cuban means it all comes from the same field, not the same country. So I found a true puro that all came from the same field. It was an amazing cigar and I built a brand around it. So now it’s Molon Labe. We only sold it over the Internet. We only made 500 boxes of each vitolo. Every year we sold out. People loved the cigar. That’s what got me into the next generation of where I am today.
Cigar Life Guy: You have said you never intended to have a brand of your own. What makes Molon Labe different?
Steve Bartell: There’s a lot of things that make it different. I’ll give the top five. One it’s a puro. So all of the binder and filler of that cigar come from the same field. Second, the wrapper is anywhere between a twelve and fifteen-year Habano out of Windsor Locks, Connecticut. Which makes it unique- it’s Habano and it’s Connecticut. It’s grown in the U.S. The third thing is it’s one hundred percent organic. So there’s no pesticide in the leaves and no fertilizer in the ground. The fourth thing is the experience you get from smoking the cigar. It’s unlike any cigar in any humidor you walk into. The last thing is that it’s a limited reserve. We only make 3,000 boxes a year every year and that’s it. It’s very old-school. It’s very artisanal. When you look at them they’re not beautiful. They’re not perfect. They don’t replicate each other. They’re all unique.
Challenges and Regulation in the Cigar Industry
Cigar Life Guy: What is the biggest challenge facing the cigar industry?
Steve Bartell: I think the first thing is regulation. The industry is constantly under attack. It makes it harder and harder for retailers to survive. The other thing is that I don’t think people realize what goes into bringing a cigar to market. It is really difficult. It’s not a matter of slapping your band on a cigar and having a box. That’s the easy part. The hard part is getting it out to the market and having your cigar respected. That’s why we kept Molon Labe as our legacy. It really ties back to the Cuban legacy from which it was born.
It’s a difficult industry. I always thought it was a huge industry, but it’s not. It’s small. Compared to most industries it’s small. It’s global in nature, but it’s a very small industry. It takes a lot to grow your business. It takes a lot of evangelizing. It takes a lot of trial and error. It takes a lot of intestinal fortitude to be able to overcome all of the obstacles that get thrown at you when you’re trying to bring a cigar to market. There’s production, boxes, pricing, marketing, and then just getting the cigar out there.
The Molon Labe Portfolio
Cigar Life Guy: Tell us a little about the Molon Labe Portfolio.
Steve Bartell: We sold out our Molon Labe Reserve over the Internet. We were an internet-only business for the first three years. Last year in 2023 I acquired a company from a friend who owned a cigar business. He was a Cuban gentleman who lived in Miami. He did something similar. He had a pet project that turned into a passion project that allowed him to sell cigars in about 80 to 85 stores in Miami. He made a great cigar. He had two lines of cigars. He had a factory in Nicaragua and he had a factory in the Dominican Republic. That brand was called Fuera de Serie- FDS is what we call it for short. It means “out of this world” in Cuban. He grew the business about as far as he was going to grow it. He did it all by hand-to-hand combat in probably the toughest market in the United States. He became a very good friend of mine. I loved his cigars. I opened a lounge of my own up here in New Hampshire and started carrying those cigars because you couldn’t find them North of Miami. They just took off. I couldn’t keep them in stock. Everybody loved them. Even today, two years later, it’s the number two-selling cigar in my lounge.
We have a Dominican line. We have an Ecuadorian Connecticut with Dominican binder and filler that we grow in Tamboril on our farm. We have an Ecuadorian Habano with a Dominican binder and filler that we grow in the Dominican Republic. Then we have a San Andres Maduro that we also grow in the Dominican Republic. We released those in a toro and robusto. Then we created a mini figurado in a Habana and Maduro which is unlike anything on the market. It’s very similar to the Short Story in looks, but we have it in a Maduro, which is unusual.
Then for our Nicaraguan line, we buy our tobacco. We have great relationships with our tobacco growers due to personal relationships between our master blender and his father -Ostvani and Luis Hernadez. Ostvani was one of the original farmers and overseers of Aganorsa Farms. So we procure our tobacco from Aganorsa Farms- EJ Fernadez and Placencia. We only use Grade A. We only pick the very best tobacco from those farms. We hand-select everything that we buy. Our Nicaraguan cigars only come in Toro. It is a USA Connecticut. It’s an Ecuadorian Habano and it’s a San Andres Maduro. We call the Nicaraguan Maduro “Chocolate Cake” and we call the Dominican Maduro “Chocolate Brownies” because the Nicaraguan is light and airy and the Dominican Maduro is very heavy- thick and chocolatey with a back note of pepper spice. In January, we released our Nicaraguan Habano as a 60, a Gordo. I would put that Gordo against any Habano on the market. It is absolutely fantastic.
We acquired the company in November of 2023. My partner was retiring from the business, but he didn’t want to just turn the company over to anybody. I made an offer to him to buy the company and he told me I was the only person he would sell to. So I bought the company in November of 2023 with the intent to take the entire line global. In January of 2024, we launched Molon Labe Cigars which included Molon Labe Reserve, our Dominican line, and our Nicaraguan line. We are currently in 106 stores in six countries and growing. I would say that we are the fastest-growing brand in America right now. The cigars do very well and I think that‘s because of several things. The quality of the tobacco is amazing, the construction is second to none, and the price point is amazing. The retail price of the Dominican cigars is $10.50. The retail price of Nicaraguan is $11, the Gordo is $12, and the mini smokes is $7.50. For the quality of the cigar you get, I would put that up against any $15 or $20 cigar.
Coffee, Cigars, and Spirits
Cigar Life Guy: Molon Labe also makes organic coffee. Why does coffee pair so well with cigars?
Steve Bartell: Part of my journey with Molon Labe was creating a cigar experience. I had the Reserve Cigar and it was phenomenal. I didn’t want to just go out and sell a cigar on its merits. I do think a cigar should stand on its own, but I didn’t want to generalize and say, “This cigar goes great with coffee.” Coffee is like cigars – they’re not all good. So I went on a journey to source coffee. I worked with 120 different coffees to get to five that paired specifically with our cigars. If you look at our website, it talks about perfect pairings and those perfect pairings are our cigars with our coffee and our whiskey. We did the same thing with whiskey. Our cigar company is New Hampshire-based and Miami-based. All of our coffees are roasted locally. We select the top one percent of coffee beans and grow organically. We have the Soprano which is a dark Italian roast. We have Death by Chocolate which is a dark Italian roast with a back flavor of dark chocolate. We have the Sumatra which is an Indonesian coffee- French roast with very low acid and goes great with a cigar. We have a Nicaraguan blend which is actually grown an hour from our factory. Then we have a Creme Brulee which is a flavored coffee.
Toward the end of 2023, we went through a similar exercise to find a reasonably sourced distillery that could make five blended spirits that go specifically with our cigars. Not just a general- “This is Whistlepig or Woodford Reserve”. All of the product that goes in the bottle is organic and grown in New Hampshire. So all the corn, all the wheat, all the rye, everything that goes into that bottle is locally grown. We’re launching that spirit line officially at the end of this month. They’re amazing. They’re taking the market by storm. So when we do a cigar event, we bring the trifecta. We bring the cigars. We bring the coffee and we bring the whiskey and rum. We start with the whiskey and rum, then go to the cigars, and finish with the coffee. The response is overwhelming.
Cigar Life Guy: You also run the ASH cigar lounge. What sets it apart from other lounges?
Steve Bartell: I think there are a couple of things that set us apart. One is service. We provide incredible service -whether it’s at the bar or in the humidor- for pairing cigars with people’s palates and then putting them on the right drink or matching the cigar to the drink. We also serve my coffee. We have a full-service coffee bar in the lounge. We pair a lot of coffees as well.
Cigar Life Guy: Anything else you’d like the cigar world to know?
Steve Bartell: If you haven’t tried Molon Labe you definitely need to try it. As I said, We are the fastest-growing brand in the U.S. right now. We have reps up and down the East Coast. We are in Florida. We are in Atlanta. We are in Dallas and Houston. We are in New England and will soon be in other major markets down the East Coast. We come to market with something that nobody else in this business comes with. There are a lot of cigar companies that have a coffee or have a coffee “partner” or a whiskey “partner” or they do a pairing with a particular whisky company. Nobody has done it with intention. In other words, nobody has it all together as a package and says, “Hey try these things together to elevate your experience”. For us, it’s about the experience. We put a lot of thought into manufacturing our products. A lot of cigar companies come out with whiskey, but it’s a whiskey that they’re putting their label on and calling it their own. These things are all ours. We control all of it. It’s done with intention and that’s what sets us apart. I don’t think anybody in the cigar industry is doing that.
We help lounges sell the cigars, whiskey, and coffee. We will promote it on our own site. We will promote it nationally. We will promote with as many events as you’d like to help that lounge be successful. If you’re successful, we’re successful. We also support the communities that we serve. We try to tie to local events and charitable organizations in our marketplaces. We raise money for drug addiction, hospitals, veterans, and underprivileged kids getting into business. That’s the thing I’m most proud of. People tell me I’m crazy for getting into this business at my age, but my goal is to build a company that gives back. My goal is to be successful enough to devote resources to the people who need it the most.
Follow Steve and Molon Labe Cigars on Instagram and check out the latest from Molon Labe Cigars here.