Continued from page 10
history.
It’s now called Micallef Cigar and the company is
extremely important to Micallef. When asked what his
next project is, he said, “I just want my cigar company to
be really, really big,” he said. “I learned very quickly that
you’ve got to run a cigar company like any other busi-
ness. I’m spending about 95 percent of my time with the
cigar business. My other businesses are mature. I’m dedi-
cating my energy and time to growing my cigar business.”
Naturally, Micallef Cigars can now be found at Silver
Leaf and Pop’s Safari Room as well as fine cigar empori-
ums across the nation.
Last year, Micallef Cigars was awarded the top new
cigar company and top boutique cigar of 2017 by Cigar &
Spirits magazine. The tobacco is grown in Nicaragua and
the cigars are made in Esteli, Nicaragua, but distributed
from their headquarters in Weatherford that’s adjacent to
JAMAK.
Out of all of his businesses, it’s his ranches and his
cigar business that he finds most intriguing. He owned
20,000 head of sheep and somewhere between 12,000
and 15,000 head of cattle; Micallef has been considered
among the top ranchers in the country. He was once the
largest importer of South African wines in the US. He is
in the process of opening a fast-casual restaurant in one
of the Bass Towers that will be called the 203 Café, set
to open in the late spring. So many ventures but very few
failures. What’s his secret?
“I have an innate curiosity,” Micallef said, modestly.
How Texan is that?
haunts, the Silver Leaf Cigar Lounge. (Mrs. Micallef
doesn’t like cigar smoke in her home, so Mr. Micallef
does his smoking elsewhere.)
As he puffed, two men came in. Seems their SUV
had broken down just outside the place.
“They wanted to sell their cigars so they could pay
for their auto repair bill,” Micallef said. The general
manager of The Silver Leaf Cigar Lounge let them.
Micallef bought a cigar. “Their cigars were really good,”
he said.
The men happened to be from the Gomez Sanchez
family, a clan of Cuban cigar-makers who had lost their
plant in Cuba and then fled to Nicaragua. Eventually,
they lost their plant in Nicaragua when the Sandinistas
took over. They’d moved operations to Mexico and
were threatened there. When they met Micallef, they
were trying to start again in the USA. Brothers Joel and
Edel Gomez Sanchez had been traveling through Texas
when they experienced mechanical trouble with their
SUV in downtown Fort Worth. Their family had been
“lighting up” the cigar industry since back in 1934.
They walked into Silver Leaf armed with cigars
and they met Micallef, who was so impressed with the
Gómez Sanchez brothers’ cigars that he asked them if
they would make 1,000 cigars expressly for him. “They
stayed here for three days because people were so nice to
them,” Micallef said. “They made these great cigars, but
they had no financial backing.”
They quickly struck up a partnership; now he owns
the company and Joel and Edel Gomez Sanchez are
working under contract for him. The rest, as they say, is
14
Photo by
Zach Peterson