Meerapfel Meir Robusto

Meerapfel, the venerable grower of Cameroon tobacco, is returning to a former business by creating a cigar brand bearing the family name. Today the Belgian company is launching the Meerapfel cigar, a brand intended to be extremely upscale.The Meerapfels are tobacco growers who have long specialized in leaf from the West African nation of Cameroon, a wrapper prized for its rarity, flavor and distinctively toothy exterior. Richard Meerapfel, who died in 2003, is widely credited with saving Cameroon tobacco from the brink of extinction. His son Jeremiah, who is the chairman of Meerapfel, says his plans for this cigar brand date back nearly 20 years, when his father died. “This project was born the day my father passed,” says the 44 year old, who was only 25 when his father died. Meerapfel set out to create a cigar that spared no details in terms of luxury, and also sought to redefine some of the traditional ways of making and presenting a cigar. The result is a cigar made with some of the company’s oldest leaves, tobacco it has been saving for a considerable amount of time.