Drew Newman first experienced the exotic world of cigars during Spring Break aged just 11.<\/p>\n
His father, Eric, took him along to a cigar road trip to Dominican Republic, and although it was an eye-opening experience (\u201cThey had Presidente beer or rum; no water for the young boy!\u201d) it confirmed what he already knew.<\/p>\n
Cigars were what he wanted to be in.<\/p>\n
Fast forward 30 plus years, and Drew now heads up the mighty US cigarmaking giant that is JC Newman. The brand sends cigars to scores of countries around the world \u2013 some of them remote and unheard of, speaking cigar wise.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have accounts in the Ivory Coast, and someone was in here earlier, enquiring about getting our cigars to Tahiti. Can you imagine?\u201d he says, still retaining that boyish enthusiasm for his first love.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe love this tradeshow \u2013 the Cigar Journal <\/em>awards are the only chance we, as cigar makers, get to actually sit down with each other, relax and enjoy each other\u2019s company. We normally just wave at each other in passing.\u201d<\/p>\n To illustrate the point, Tony Gomez of La Flor Dominicana strolls by and the pair share a quick hello.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know if my kids will want to join the business \u2013 they are only young, but they love going to the factory to see uncle Bobby and their grandfather. I was never pushed into the family business, it happened because I wanted it to.\u201d<\/p>\n After studying law, working in the government and for a non-profit organisation, Drew felt the time was right a few years back to use the skills he had garnered to take on the family business to new levels.<\/p>\n It\u2019s to his credit \u2013 and the rest of his family, who are generally regarded as the nicest people in the business \u2013 that JC Newman shows no signs of slowing up their generational, historic production of fine cigars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Interview with Drew Newman at InterTabac.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":73694,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[53,49,2808,44],"tags":[6635],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73693"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73693"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73696,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73693\/revisions\/73696"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}