Get out your handkerchiefs! A cigar talk to share with your dad or other influential man in your life. In November 2003, Jeremiah Meerapfel's father Richard died suddenly of a heart attack. Richard was heralded with saving Cameroon/Central African wrapper tobacco from extinction in the early 1990s. Jeremiah and his brother Joshua carried on their father's work. In honor of their father, the Meerapfels launched a new cigar category of limited-production UberLuxury cigars. For the rest of us, if you've smoked a cigar with a Cameroon wrapper, Jeremiah has probably touched, farmed, cured, processed and shipped that tobacco.

Cigar makers like Meerapfel protect the flavor and character of their hand-rolled cigars with Boveda. Boveda are those brown 2-way humidity packs that you find in cigar boxes. Cigar smokers use Boveda in humidors to make sure the cigars inside stay well-humidified or they can be hard to light, burn to too fast or get moldy. With Boveda in your humidor, you'll get better flavor from a cigar. Boveda has been keeping cigars tasting great for more than 25 years. Boveda Protects Your Premium Cigars. Guaranteed.

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00:00 Cold open

00:59 Wears the Borsalino hat worn by his father and grandfather

01:50 Cameroon wrapper is the most challenging premium tobacco leaf to grow

05:50 The trauma of the sudden death of a father

08:04 Carrying on your father's legacy

10:46 I know I could never fill my father's shoes

17:34 Balancing fatherhood and family

21:19 Every day, make a difference in a positive way

28:51 The first Meerapfel cigar released in 80 years

30:17 The first sustainable cigar box in the world

32:59 Cigars made from the oldest tobaccos

34:35 Boveda integrated into UberLuxury cigar packaging

40:12 "If you don't do it with passion, don't do it at all."

- There's a story inside every smoke shop,

with every cigar, and with every person.

Come be a part of the cigar lifestyle of Boveda.

This is "Box Press." (upbeat guitar music)

- Welcome to another episode of "Box Press."

I'm your host, Rob Gagner.

We are live at the PCA 2022 show,

and I am sitting across from a legend in the industry.

If you've smoked a Cameroon cigar,

it has probably been touched, farmed, cured,

and processed, and then shipped by this gentleman.

You have a very unique look, Jeremiah Meerapfel.

Thank you for being here on the "Box Press" podcast.

- Rob, it's a pleasure.

- Your hat and scarf is just

a striking look that I absolutely love.

Is that something that you've always had or is it something

that kind of grew on you as you got a little older?

- Nothing grows on you when you're a Meerapfel.

You know, we're a 400-year-old family business,

11 generations, and innovation is a very peculiar thing

in our family because it takes a long time.

The hat was worn by my father, by my grandfather.

The actual same Borsalino hat

was worn by my father and my grandfather.

I think Borsalino started its operations in the 1800s,

if I'm not mistaken and it's been a trademark

of our family for many, many, many generations.

- So it's been going on from father to son, father to son.

- It has, it has, you know, when you also,

when you're living in Europe,

in Belgium, with the rainy weather,

you want to have a hat on your head to protect-

- It's utilitarian, right?

It's absolutely utilitarian. That's awesome.

But because your family has been growing and using

and sourcing Cameroon tobacco and basically

been the pioneer, that's no small feat because in Africa,

it's a whole different political climate.

But your dad really went in there to help

figure out how to grow Cameroon wrapper.

What were some of the challenges that he had

with communicating with the people in order

to get the job done so that we could enjoy

this beautiful tobacco you guys distribute?

- Yeah, dad had no issues communicating with the people.

On the contrary, that's the reason he was there.

He fell in love with the people

of Cameroon very early on in life.

When he was 18 years old, he moved to the eastern parts

of Cameroon in the rainforest where he was one

of the only peoples to be included in the culture

of the Pygmies, of the tribe of the Pygmies,

which were in the rainforest of the Ituri.

And that was the beginning of everything for him.

Once he was included in those tribes

and he fell in love with the culture and the peoples,

he dedicated his entire life later on into making his way

and taking over the operations of the French monopoly

that were controlling the Cameroon wrapper

in Eastern Cameroon, and finally, buy them out

in the early 90s and his dream became reality.

He was able to build the villages and the schooling systems

and the hospitals and all the other infrastructure

to help the peoples that have been,

his brothers, his sisters, his uncles, his aunts

for the better part of the majority of his life.

And that's what Cameroon meant to us as a family.

Cameroon was our family.

It was our family because it was my father's family.

And later on became ours.

An extraordinary culture,

an extraordinary peoples and an extraordinary country.

Does it have challenges? Of course, it has challenges.

Very, very different than what you would see here in

the United States or in any of the civilized world actually.

You know, who would think that

the number one killer would be a mosquito?

Who would think that you would have gorillas, which

are both frightening and dangerous to human beings?

Who would think that elephants could cause mayhem

walking through the village and destroying everything?

Who would think that you would have black panthers

that need to be caught or else?

Who would think that drinkable water is a challenge?

Until we built the wells that we built

and the filtration systems and that without them,

thousands and thousands and tens of thousands

of people fall seriously ill and die.

The environment can be very, very different

and very dangerous, but it's all made up for by

the beauty of the people, by the beauty of the culture,

and by this unique leaf, which my family called

the sacred leaf, which is not probably,

which is certainly the most challenging leaf

of premium tobacco to be grown anywhere on the planet.

- Right, that's what I mean.

That's a very difficult area to grow tobacco,

that challenge there.

So I mean, just to take that-

- Well, you have no running water,

no irrigation, no electricity.

- Right. - No tractors.

Things are done with your two hands like

they were done a hundred years ago or 500 years ago.

Things are done the old way, the traditional way.

And I don't know what it is with our family,

but we like the UberTradition.

- But a good challenge is rewarding when it's overcame.

- Well, it's very rewarding,

but there's a lot of drama involved.

My father lost his life at a very young age.

He passed away due to an expropriation

in Central Africa in the Cameroon East region

of Eastern Cameroon and Western Central Africa.

We lost everything so many times

and this is a business model which we've chosen

to insert so much passion and so much of who we are.

There's not many people, I believe,

that would be so adventurous to follow their passions

to a limit which costs you your life.

On the other hand, you're right.

I agree with you, Rob.

When you're able to bring out of nature

at a very hefty price, something which is so noble

and so special, it brings a lot of meaning

into the choices you've made as a human being,

both personally and professionally.

- Yeah, man.

Yeah, I just can't, you know, express in words

the gratitude that I have for your family to take on

that responsibility or to even accept that challenge.

- When we burn the leaf, we put a lighter to it,

a flame to it, and those aromas come out.

The white ash, the goosebumps revealing the magnesium,

the sugars, the coffees, the chocolates,

that distinct Meerapfel Cameroon smells and taste

and those fumes are coming up and going towards the heavens.

The smile it puts on our faces, on our hearts,

they enlighten a lot and I would have it no other way.

- Well said. Well said.

When you decided to carry on

in your dad's kind of legacy, right?

Is that a good way to say that?

The generational legacy that is your last name,

was that a choice had you not made it,

that your dad would've been okay with,

had you gone off and done your own thing?

Would he have been okay with that

or was it always something that you knew

you were going to do and that was your passion?

- It's probably the hardest question

anybody's asked me in my life, Rob.

When you're born in a family

with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years

of tradition, to be perfectly honest,

I think it's a mixture of everything.

There's a mixture of responsibility.

There's a mixture of obligation.

There's a mixture of passion. There's a mixture of,

it's not explainable.

It's something which you're born into and which

is infused into you since the moment you're born.

My earliest memories,

I must have been maybe 1, 2, 3 years old.

I don't know. I was a very, very small baby, a child.

I was sitting on my father's lap whilst

he's smoking a cigar or my grandfather.

Cigars have been present in my lifetime

since my earliest ages, since my earliest days.

It's like a part of you.

It's like a leg, it's like an arm. It truly is.

So the question is a difficult one

because when something's part of you forever,

the only thing that is spoken about

in the household is tobacco and cigars.

The only thing that's spoken

about socially is tobacco and cigars.

The best friends of my father

were Carlito Fuente and Robbie Levin,

and our vacations were spent with tobacco people.

I wasn't 15 or 20 years old at that time.

I was a newborn baby at that time.

So with all the goodwill in the world, Rob,

I really wouldn't know how to answer that question.

- Well said, though.

I mean that, was there ever though a time

that maybe you thought you wouldn't be able

to fill his shoes or step into that role?

- I know I could never fill my father's shoes.

- True. - And I know I'll never

be able to fill my father's shoes,

but I sure as hell try every single day

of my life to make him proud.

He's no longer with us physically, unfortunately.

But even now, today, I wake up every single morning

of my life and try to make my daddy proud.

I think that's what many people do

and there's no difference to me.

- Was there a time that your dad actually expressed

to you how proud he was of you that made you just kind

of like, just melt and kind of think, "Oh my God,

I couldn't feel much better than I do right now."

- First time anybody's asked me that question,

and therefore it's gonna be the first time I ever answered.

There was once a few days before he passed away,

a few days before he passed away,

he told me he loved me for the first time

and he told me that he was proud of me for the first time.

And that in itself,

for me was very unusual and very shocking.

And he was in the Dominican Republic.

He went to see, it was his birthday.

We spent his birthday with Daniel Núñez in the morning,

and then we had lunch with Guillermo León,

and then afterwards we had dinner with Carlito Fuente

and it was almost like he was saying his goodbyes.

It was a very, very unusual moment.

The circumstances were very unusual.

(crowd chattering softly)

Yes, Rob, he did once.

- Thank you for sharing that.

It's just, my father passed when I was six.

So that yearning for that male role model in your life,

I always feel like I'm kind of living in the legacy

and the stories of, so I too have to always think,

am I doing what my dad would be proud of me doing?

And there's no doubt that I am, because it just,

I don't know, it's a feeling,

but you still ask the question.

As a human, as a man, you still ask the same question.

So we're very, very smart intellectual beings,

but we also fall into the trap of those

psychological hurdles that we have to jump over.

Do you have children now yourself?

- I do, yes.

I have two beautiful- - Do you have a son?

- I have two sons. Yes.

- Two sons? - And a daughter. Yes.

- Are they going to be taking over

into the business as well, just like you did?

- I have very little doubt in my mind

and I truly believe that they will.

But I express to them every day that they

can choose whatever it is they want to choose

and whatever they feel that's special to them

should be pursued at the highest level, whatever it is.

- Right. - You know,

they should do what they want to do.

But obviously there's a secret place

in my heart that is reassuring me every moment

that they fell into the magic potion.

(both laughing)

- How old are they?

- They're very young.

I started late, so I have a 10 year old,

a seven and a six year old.

- As you're shaping your children,

because I try to use the word shaping

because anytime that we tell our children what to do,

I just recently had a baby boy-

- Mazel tov. - Three weeks ago.

- Congratulations. - Thank you. So I'm-

- This is big news. - Yeah.

- Where's the Scotch, so we can celebrate?

- And I have a daughter who's a year and a half old.

Her name's Nora and I just had Finley three weeks ago,

so I'm building my family too, just along with you here,

Jeremiah and my wife is teaching me

the whole positive nurturing, not the negative

because being told what to do is oftentimes

just the opposite of what we want, as a father,

how do you navigate the desire to tell your kids what

to do outta love and sacrifice, to not see them get hurt?

What's the Jeremiah rule of thumb to follow,

so you don't fall into the psychological trap

and keep your kids always making

their own decisions with your helpful guidance?

- Rob, I have no idea how to answer that question.

You can sit here and talk to me about tobacco

or cigars until the moon falls down,

but on educating the children, I have no idea.

I think that I'm trying to do the best I can,

but the reality is, I really don't know.

I can tell you one thing though.

They will have been infused with a lot of passion,

tradition through their, coming out of their ears

and the notions of value and respect.

I have no patience, no tolerance,

no nothing for a lack of values and a lack of respect.

- Yeah. - And if it's the thing

that I manage to infuse or to mold

like the words you didn't use, but to mold into them,

that's what I will mold into them and hopefully,

one day, those values and those traditions

and the love of those values, the respect

of those values will be what makes them

stronger human beings and valuable human beings.

The rest, I don't know.

- Yeah, I'm so glad you said that

because I'm trying to pick up tidbits

from other fathers to figure out how to do this.

But I'm right there with you thinking

I don't know what I'm doing and I'm hoping

it's not creating a problem for my child

because all I want for them is the best possible life.

You didn't know you were gonna come on the show

and talk all about life and not cigars.

- That's perfectly fine. - Okay.

- And it's quite refreshing to be honest with you.

- Good, I appreciate it.

As you are obviously navigating this life

with raising children, you navigate the business world,

which many of our listeners have to do both.

It's business, you have to work, you have to provide,

you have to do something productive for your life.

And then you also have to figure out how to carve out

some time to make some memories with family.

What is your kind of hard and fast rule?

Are you a type of guy that's when I'm done with work,

I'm done with work and I'm into the family?

Or is it really easy for you to blend both and get

a lot out of both and be very successful in both areas?

- I'm in a very peculiar situation

because my work is my family.

And so I'm engaged with my, let's call it work.

You call it work, I don't see it as work,

but because this is my life. - Right.

- And this, my entire life is built around-

- So your career here- - What I'm doing, yes.

- Your legacy.

- So for me, six days a week,

24 hours a day, this is what I do.

This is what I love doing.

I try to include my children as much

as I can into this world.

I try to show them and I try to share with them.

And just like I was brought up with a lot

of respect towards understanding that this is how it is.

Growing up in a family such as ours,

that's one of the sacrifices that,

if you wanna call it a sacrifice that you

will make as a child, is that the environment,

the daddy that you have is a daddy that's also married

and also a father to a very strong tradition,

which he's maintaining and a passion which he has,

which is just as important to him than everything else

because it's part of it, it's part of the picture.

I always laugh, I say I have four children

and I do have four children.

I have two sons, I have a daughter

and then I have my business. - Yeah.

And what we call the business now,

what you're calling a business

is something which needs time.

It needs nurturing, it needs education.

- Just like a kid. - Just like a child.

There are so many people who depend on it.

In Africa, there's close to 40,000 people that depend on

the organization which we are running there.

The impact is on hundreds of thousands of people.

When we run the clinics or the schools

or the freshwater projects or whatever it is we're doing,

we're changing the lives of hundreds

and hundreds of thousands of people.

We're saving the lives of thousands

and tens of thousands of people.

So if you don't see it as part

of your children and part of what you do,

you're probably not gonna have a very happy life

and you're probably not gonna excel

in what you're doing at a very high level.

My children respect this and they understand this

and they're also part of this,

and this is why I think that it's not easy to grow up

in a family business environment where things

have been done hundreds of years in a certain way.

But I believe that it's an education

with very severe but very strong values.

And hopefully they'll accept to infuse those

into their daily lives later on and make a difference-

- Right. - To people around them

later on because at the end of the day,

we're here for a finite amount of time, whether that's days,

hours, weeks, years, whatever it may be.

And there's one thing you wanna make sure you do,

and that's a difference. - Make a difference.

- Make a difference in a positive way.

We have that power to help so many people, right?

And it's such a waste and such a pity not to do it.

And some people think, huh, but wait a second.

You know, what can I do?

Ladies and gentlemen, don't think you need

to change the world in a massive way.

Take a dollar out of your pocket,

take one minute out of your time.

That's all it takes to get the domino effect going

and making an enormous difference around you.

- I was doing it this morning because I was struggling

to try to find some equipment that we needed,

and I was asking the security guards,

the hotel staff for help and I made sure I went out

on my way to just thank them for their time,

because guess what, in hospitality,

they probably get a demand here and there.

But if somebody can actually thank them

for the time that technically they're paid to do,

but it's just like you said, it's a respect.

You engaged with my request, you helped talk through it.

You didn't provide a solution,

but you just helped me get to the next level.

I owe it to you to at least thank you for that time.

And so I always tried to make a conscious choice

of looking them in the eye and saying,

"Thank you for the time."

If it was on the phone, really just saying,

"Thank you very much for working through this."

I think you're absolutely right.

The domino effect happens right there. That's the start.

How can you make the difference?

It's how we treat each other.

And that's gonna make the domino effect

and it's gonna ripple out and I hope to God,

and it doesn't start with me because guess what?

I got it last night when I was sitting around hanging out

with my buddies, loving up on me, talking, whatever.

So the domino effect just keeps going.

And I want to make sure I'm the piece that tips over

and knocks another domino into another good domino.

I don't wanna fall out of the domino and stop the train

from the good vibes happening throughout the world.

- Rob, one of the, I think things that keeps people

like us engaged and in this industry,

one of the most surprising things is

the engagements that factory owners

or tobacco men have and it's not surprising.

It's not surprising because the way

you share emotion in the cigar industry is so powerful.

And the effect you have on people around you is so wonderful

that I think it explains a lot about the engagement

that we have and the reward that we have.

And at the end of the day, there might be a little bit of,

a little bit of an egoistical side to all of this,

whereas I'm searching for pleasure by making people happy

and that happiness makes us, it's immensely rewarding.

- Right, there's no better,

like when I was a funeral director,

there was no amount of money or amount of anything

that could get me the gratification that I got

from helping somebody through a difficult time.

A position that they couldn't navigate,

I was able to come in and help them.

So when you talk about being able to deliver

some happiness and enjoyment, relaxation, a break,

whatever you want to call a cigar gives you,

or the experience gives you,

you are delivering that to thousands,

to hundreds of thousands of people all over the world.

What, if we just take a step back and just look at that,

what a cool job, and you don't call it a job,

but what a cool life then that we get to live.

- Yes. - Jeremiah,

I want to thank you for just coming in,

sitting down with me and talking.

I know you have cigars that you're launching.

It's a big project.

It's something that isn't light.

In fact, the band, you know,

there's the band people have talked about like bikini bands

or cutouts and you took it to the next level.

There's nothing like that band.

It's like a stained glass window.

And really what the art is is the wrapper,

the wrapper that you and your family have poured your time

and energy and blood, sweat, and tears for centuries into,

and I think there's no other better way for you to have

a wrapper on your cigar than the way you did it.

Was that a conscious choice or am I just hopping on

the philosophical bandwagon here that I'm vibing on?

- This, the Meerapfel Cigar Project comes from a,

it's been 20 years I've been developing this project,

19 years to be exact and the idea behind it is to say,

listen, I owe something to my father and to my grandfather

and to my great-grandfather and so on and so forth.

And I owe to bring something to the table,

something innovative, something different.

But it's very, very hard to do so when every generation

of your family has shifted the course of the industry,

literally shifted the course of the industry

and for me it was a lifelong dream to try

to create a new segment in our industry.

But creating a new segment is

not something you can take very lightly.

You need to actually bring value.

You need to bring meaning,

and you need to justify creating a new segment.

It's one thing, creating a product which has

a different type of packaging or a different kind

of marketing or a different kind of, and that's one thing.

It's another thing creating a product,

which is actually a different product.

You can drive around in a Mercedes and a BMW,

they're different products.

They're packaged differently,

but they're in relatively similar segments.

- Right. - But you can also walk into

the Pagani factory or to the Bugatti factory.

And yes, it's a car, it has four wheels,

it will take you from A to B,

but in essence it's a different niche.

It's a different,

it's a different industry, so to speak.

And what these people have done

and the European luxury world was very,

very strong at doing this.

Chanel was very strong at doing this.

Richard Mille and Patek Philippe

were very strong at doing this.

A lot of these, you know, what I call UberLuxury brands,

were very strong at doing this,

was taking a product and deconstructing it,

deconstructing every single element of the product.

And I use Pagani, it's a very easy example

to understand, because you take a car

and you basically break it down into pieces

and either you reinvent the pieces or you bring them to

a level which is never been touched before in the industry.

And then you reassemble this.

And this is what was missing in my opinion

in the cigar industry, was the UberLuxury segment

of let's bring things to a level which has

just never been achieved before in

a complete deconstruction of the product.

It was not easy.

20 years is a long time to develop something like this.

The band is definitely one of the pieces.

We have a patent on that band,

on the way that it's been done

and the reasons why it's been done.

We had to bring it into the IROS Spatial Industry

to get it to that level.

So this is not something that is possible

to do in a band factory because of many reasons.

What inspired me was my heritage, the lace of Belgium.

Belgium is very known for its lace, the Bruges lace.

And what is it?

It's the capacity to see the beauty of what's behind it.

And so you were spot on when you were speaking

about the wrapper. - Thank God.

How do we actually take something and make lace out of it?

Like the lace that a woman would wear.

On one hand, you can dream of what about what's behind it.

It's very romantic, it's incredible.

It's showing just a little bit, but at the same time,

it has a nobility to it, it has an elegance to it.

I worked very, very closely with a partner,

John van Tintelen, who's a band maker in the Netherlands.

Very specialized, very, very, very high end,

very specialized and he was definitely part of the R&D

and the innovation in this and, you know, enabled us

to bring this to the next level.

The boxes, boxes I went crazy with, you know,

how do you make something which actually looks good,

but at the same time is different?

I didn't want to use cardboard, recycled cardboard.

I didn't want to go in that direction

because it's definitely not UberLuxury.

So I had to stick with wood,

but I didn't want to touch wood.

Wood is a disaster.

It deforests the planet. It's wrong.

And if we could do something to change that,

how do we do it?

So we started experimenting.

Finally, we found a very, very precious wood out of Japan,

which is kind of like a bamboo, which is used for their,

you know, $5,000 knives and the food industry,

because it doesn't, it's also very interesting.

It doesn't play with the taste

or the smell in any which way, shape, or form.

And we created a, I believe the first sustainable box

in the world, cigar box in the world,

which has no impact on forests

or deforestation in any which way, shape or form.

And this just goes on with everything, the ribbon.

And I'll just, I won't go into all of the details,

but there's not a single element in the entire product

which has not been brought either by reinvention

or bringing to the next level, to the UberLuxury level.

And we were very proud when we could bring out

a product where we could say,

"All right, Meerapfel has now created

a new segment in the cigar industry."

- Yeah, that's a big ask, but you did it really well.

- And well, I don't know if we did it really well,

if we would've done it in a year or two,

we would've done it really well.

- No. - We took 20 years to do it.

- No. - So, let's say that

we managed to figure it out after a generation.

- I totally disagree. (Jeremiah chuckling)

Because anytime something's new and really getting rebuilt

from the ground up, if you did it in a year or two,

it would've already been done before.

So the fact that it took you 20 years

actually to me seems like a short timeline

because it probably should have been something

that didn't get finished and on your deathbed,

you would've had to pass it to your sons.

- In a way, that's what happened,

but through the previous generation.

My father had been putting away tobaccos his entire life

and when he passed away 19 years ago,

which is the moment I started working on this project,

we continued putting away tobaccos.

One of the elements I did not speak about,

and I won't go into detail,

is that this product uses the oldest tobaccos

on the planet as a production cigar.

These are not batched cigars,

these are not one off, 100 bucks cigars.

This is a production which is using tobaccos at a standard,

which typically wouldn't be able to be done

by anybody in the world simply because of

the nature of the tobaccos that are being used.

So again, I think dad actually,

without knowing it planted the seed in terms of,

I don't think I know in terms of what was gonna happen

in the next generation and it took 20 years,

which is considered a generation,

but it finally came to fruition and to maturity.

And I'm gonna tell you a little secret

that nobody knows and this is gonna be

an exclusive for you today. - Yes. My ears perk up.

- We manufactured in the box and nobody knows this.

You can see it,

but it's not easy to see and nobody knows it.

We haven't ever said this,

we manufactured in the box a segment to be able

to maintain humidity control for the cigars.

Why did we do it in a hidden way?

This product is not about show offing anything.

It's not about advertising anything.

It's about getting the product

to the level of the UberLuxury.

And so on the bottom of the box,

and this has never been released yet,

it's never been showed to the world yet.

On the bottom of the box of the 25-box count,

we actually engineered a slit.

There's a fake bottom onto the box and inside

that slit there is a Boveda humidification system,

which is maintaining all of the moisture levels,

all of the, what we're specialized in doing.

- Right. - To be able to keep

these cigars at the level which they need to be.

I mean, you're talking about very,

very, very expensive products.

You're talking about extremely difficult cigars to find.

I mean, most people in the world

will never actually see a box of these cigars.

They will only be in a few of

the finest retailers on the planet,

in Monte Carlo and in Hong Kong

and in London and in Paris and in New York.

It's going to be a very, very, very, very,

very small production every year.

Consistent production, but small production.

So we need to maintain the product at a perfect,

absolutely perfect level and like I said,

either we reinvent things or we push them to a level,

which is what is available in the world.

And actually we actually used your system

to be able to do that for the hydrometer.

- Wow. I'm glad we could provide that.

- And I appreciate that you could provide that

because without it, we would've had a problem.

We would have a challenge getting the product to the level

we needed it, to the retailers and to the consumers.

- Wow. Yeah.

No wonder why when typically on this show,

we smoke while we talk, but now I'm really glad we're not.

Because your cigar is way, it's, I don't know how to say it,

but you know what I'm saying, right?

Your cigar is not a cigar, you just sit down,

light up, and have a conversation.

- No, no, it could be,

it could be, I mean- - But not, in this setting.

- But you want to do it in an environment-

- Right. - And in a moment where 100%

of your senses and the experience goes into the product.

- Exactly. - It would be a waste

and it would be a pity not to do it.

- Disrespectful. Yeah. - Honestly, yes.

Because at that level of product,

at that level of product with that level

of precision and that level of nuance,

you don't wanna be sitting in an environment where

there's a huge amount of cigar smoke around you,

which is playing with your taste buds-

- Yeah. - With what's going on

on an olfactive level,

you want to be concentrating on what you're doing

and enjoying the moment with someone or without someone.

- Right. - But in a very specific way.

Absolutely. - After,

I didn't even know any of this stuff,

Jeremiah, I didn't know any of this.

- You see, the Meerapfel family

is not very good at marketing or advertising.

- Right. - Or anything of the sort.

We've always been very much behind the scenes

for the last 400 years of our involvement

in the tobacco and the cigar business.

You know, most people don't know that in 1876

we opened up a cigar factory in Southern Germany

where we were manufacturing Meerapfel cigars.

So this is not the first time a Meerapfel cigar comes out.

This is actually a tribute to the factory of 1876,

where- - 1876?

- Yes, where my great-great grandfather, Meir Meerapfel,

established the first cigar factory of the family.

The tobacco, we were doing a few, 300 years before that.

But the cigar factory was only in 1876.

- Only. Yeah, yeah. - Yes.

Yeah, just a short, short time ago.

It was an actual thing.

I haven't had a ton of opportunity to travel to Europe,

but I have gone to Spain and when I was there,

just to be able to look at buildings that, like in America,

we just don't have a frame of reference for how old that is.

And as I sit across from you, I get the sense

that I'm looking at an old historic building

that I just have to take a moment and stop and look at

and not pass by without looking at it on the street.

And if I get the opportunity to pop inside of it,

which I think we kind of did with this conversation,

that it would be a huge treat and blessing

to my experience as a human through this life.

So I don't think there's any better way

to close out this conversation than that.

And I can't thank you enough for being patient with me

and also just having grace and gratitude with sitting down

with me and talking about some difficult things

and peeling back the onion and letting me

step inside the building that is far beyond

just what my frame of reference is.

- Rob, it was a true honor (upbeat guitar music)

and a true pleasure to sit with you today.

And I want to thank you for your time and the opportunity.

The discussion was special and I always say this,

I say this on my shows, I say this to everybody

and it's coming from the heart.

If you don't do it with passion, don't do it at all, Rob.

- Absolutely. I agree.

That's another episode of "Box Press."

This was something super unique and I hope you enjoyed it.

I can't say much more than that.