Rocky Patel, Cigar Czar

He orchestrates a $ 30 million business empire, produces 16 million cigars a year, owns huge tobacco plantations in the Honduras and Nicaragua where he employs 3500 people and also has offices in Naples, Florida. His cigar buddies have included Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mel Gibson, John Travolta, and Bruce Willis as well as business biggies and star athletes.

But best of all, he is probably the only Indian in the world – and certainly the only Patel – to have a cigar named after him!

Meet Rocky Patel – real name Rakesh – who is quite the rock star in the world of cigars because he is the creator of one of the hottest selling cigars in the US and many other parts of the world – the Rocky Patel. You’ll find them in all the major restaurants from the Four Seasons to the Ritz Carlton to country clubs, hotels and retail shops in the United States, as well as many countries in Europe and Asia.

“Rocky follows cigar trends like some investors monitor the NASDAQ,” wrote Savvy Life magazine. “With a Nextel phone in one hand and a 200 meter sprint to the jet’s gateway, he’s always on the move — and for good reason. He’s the new ‘Wonder Boy’ of the cigar industry.”

At cigar events and dinners, he often has fans rushing to get his autograph and on internet chat rooms you see the kind of devotion cigar aficionados have for his smokes. One enthusiast drooled: ‘You are a tobacco blending god!’

Rocky Patel cigars have also received great reviews from critics even though they do not bear a traditional big brand name. The Vintage Series received “Best of the Best” from the ‘Robb Report’; the 1990 Robusto received a 92 rating and Torpedo received a 90 rating from ‘Cigar Aficionado.’

Rocky, who came to the US from Bombay with his parents and brother when he was 14, often travels to India where he has a close, extended family of cousins and second cousins. He studied at the University of Wisconsin before becoming a successful business and entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles, building up a thriving 14-attorney practice. While dating an actress, he found himself spending a lot of time on the movie sets, smoking a cigar.

Since the Grand Havana Room had opened up across from his office in Beverly Hills, he became one of the founding members and would often relax after work with a cigar. Mel Gibson, Demi Moore, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis were among the patrons and so started his brush with celebrity and the joy of a good smoke.

Always on the lookout for intriguing investment opportunities, Rocky got involved with manufacturing cigars in the Honduras and even organized four or five cigar dinners with Schwarzenegger in the star’s restaurant. Although he was still practicing law, cigars were becoming a larger part of his life.

“Giving up law was difficult, because I had built up the law firm myself from one person to 14 attorneys working for me,” he says. “But they were long, hard days and I got burnt out practicing law. I was tied to the office from 8 in the morning to 10 at night and this is much more fun. Now I get to eat, drink and smoke for a living!”

Still, Rocky is reputed to be the hardest working man and a perfectionist. He came in during a boom time in the cigar industry in the 90’s but has had to really work to grow his brand name. To make a dent in a tightly controlled industry, he had to come up with a savvy marketing plan. Ask him whether it was tough breaking in to the cigar industry and he responds, “Yes, it was because I was not of Cuban or American descent and all the cigar makers had a long tradition from Cuba or from Central America and had it as a family business. I was an outsider looking in.”

Undeterred, he spent a lot of time going door to door, from retail shop to retail shop, covering over 600 cities in 700 days. He did endless rounds of events, promoting the product, meeting with retailers and organizing cigar dinners and a national advertising campaign. Meeting retailers one on one, city after city, he built personal relationships with cigar stores and soon the name Rocky Patel took on a boutique brand name status.

“People called me the ultimate road warrior, because I just got out and pounded the pavement. I got the product out there and slowly built up a sales force and moved it from there. That’s how we launched it,” he says.

Rocky grows his own tobacco but he also buys large quantities of tobacco from some of the best growers of Cuban seed tobacco in the world based in Nicaragua, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Costa Rica and the Cameroon. While generally cigars like Puros are made of fillers and wrappers from the same region, he likes to blend tobaccos from different regions.

The company is known for its unique blends and all the cigars are blended by Rocky himself in a time consuming process that can take up to a year. He is inspired by different qualities of topnotch cigars — the quality of Padron, the construction of Davidoff and the consistency of Fuentes, while also keeping an eye on the price

In 2003, he created the “Rocky Patel Vintage Series,” which is made of premium quality aged tobacco. The Rocky Patel cigars are known for their quality and also for how well the tobacco is fermented and aged. He says, “We are known for a rich, complex cigar that delivers a lot of flavor, but it is very elegant and balanced so there’s no harshness, no bitterness. They have a nice ash and you can smoke them to the end without any sour taste in your mouth.”

Rocky has all the passion of the believer and wants to introduce the uninitiated into the pleasures of a good puff. Since the past several years his company takes 30 – 40 people down to Honduras per week, showing them the whole process of cigar making, from putting the seedling in the ground to the finished product in the box.

He also participates in the Big Smokes sponsored by Cigar Aficionado, with people waiting in line to receive his newest cigars. Rocky Patel is also the official cigar of the Masters Golf Tournament, and Rocky himself has appeared in all the luxury magazines from Rob Report and Maxims to Smoke and GQ

“The power of cigars is unique, because you meet so many people. If you have a cigar, it opens the door to so many opportunities,” he says. He’s met everyone from talk show host Rush Limbaugh to basketball legend Michael Jordan to Neil Sheff, CEO of General Motors. He’s also involved with celebrities and star athletes in black tie and charity events since cigars are a high profile, high glamour product.

Quite the showman, Rocky throws some of the most fun parties: he rented out the House of Blues with a live band and on another occasion 5000 guests rocked at the pool of the Palms Hotel, with the Rocky Patel logo emblazoned on the side of the hotel. The newest splashy happening is the upcoming reality TV series called Cigar Czar, starring Rocky Patel. Also on the agenda is a men’s clothing line, cologne and accessories like humidors and leather goods under the Rocky Patel brand name in 2008.

Rocky is hardly ever at home in Naples, Florida but when he is, he’s usually entertaining friends. A good cook, he even did a stint as a cooking show host on cable TV during his college days. Wine is another big passion and he has a collection of 3000 bottles in his cellar. The two loves of his life are his black convertible Bentley and his Aston Martin Vanquish, one of only hundred such sports cars ever produced.

Of course, his overriding passion is the cigar and his 20-hour days are involved with its creation, promotion and celebration. With such a mad schedule, it’s no surprise that Rocky Patel is a happy-go-lucky bachelor still and has not found his dream woman yet. She would definitely have to compete with his Blackberry, his constant travel, crazy working hours and his passion for his 16 million cigars. It’s a rocky road indeed!

(C) Lavina Melwani