You could say he’s the rock star of the cigar world. Nobody gave non-resident Indian Rocky ‘Rakesh’ Patel half a chance when he daringly ventured into the rarefied world of premium hand-made cigars 20 years ago. Patel was an attorney in Hollywood, who’d got hooked on cigars while hanging around on movie sets and lighting up with the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. He wasn’t of Cuban or Latin American descent, and he certainly didn’t have any links with the business that’s typically passed through the generations.

But Rocky was never one to flee from a challenge. And now, 20 years later, he has smoked out the naysayers and torpedoed the competition to emerge as one of the world’s top cigar makers. “I can’t believe 20 years have gone by so fast,” says Rocky, while launching his new Twentieth Anniversary cigar in India.

He adds: “It has certainly been a lot of hard work, diligence and passion. Being of non- Cuban, non-Latin descent, being from India, it was very difficult to succeed in the cigar business. We’re proud after 20 years that we’re one of the world’s top three or four brands.”

His Naples, Florida-based Rocky Patel Premium Cigars has a turnover of $50million today and rolls out 21million cigars a year, all hand-made, from factories in Honduras and Nicaragua. It’s growing at nearly 12 per cent a year against the industry’s seven-odd per cent. What’s more, the Rocky Patel cigars rank right up there along with the Cohibas and Padrons and the Ashtons, Fuentes and Davidoffs.

Last year, Cigar Aficionado magazine ranked his The Edge Habano Torpedo as the seventh best cigar of 2015 on its coveted rankings. And in 2014, it had the Rocky Patel Royale Toro as the fifth best cigar. Says Gregory Mottola, senior editor, Cigar Aficionado: “Rocky makes a lot of cigars in a lot of different blends and styles. His best, however, can compete with any premium cigar from any major manufacturer.”

Now, Rocky, who’s on the road 275 days a year promoting his cigars, has even more smokin’ hot plans for expansion — and that includes moving beyond cigars. So, he’s taking a shot at making premium liquors and wines next. He has rolled out his whisky operations in Virginia, from where he’ll launch his first rye whisky next year followed by a bourbon later. He has also started making wines in California.

“We’re turning into a luxury lifestyle company,” says Rocky. He adds: “We’re going from farm to bottle. We’re growing our own rye, wheat, barley and corn in Virginia. We’ve been working on blends of the ryes and bourbons and after that, hopefully, we’ll look at a [single malt] whisky.” He’s moving into liquors because “the pairings go so well together”, he says.

He is also lighting up his growth plans for his cigar business — and that includes India, which he entered with Hemanth Sureddi’s Cigar Conexion three years ago. There’s the new Twentieth Anniversary brand for one.

Rocky first launched the brand in the US in November. He followed it up with a launch in India last month, wowing cigar lovers across Goa, Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad. The cigar has been four years in the making. “I’ve been saving some very rare and special tobaccos for 10 years to make this blend,” says Rocky, who’s a keen gourmet cook and who blends his own cigars.

A cigar’s flavours come from the wrapper or outer layer of tobacco, the filler or bunch of tobacco at its centre, and the binder leaves that hold the filler. For the Twentieth Anniversary, he created a blend with fillers from farms in Nicaragua and Honduras. He enclosed this in a Honduran wrapper with a secret binder. The result is a cigar with “a lot of richness, complexity, but with elegance and balance”. “It has a lot of caramel, coffee, cocoa, chocolate and hints of nuttiness,” says Rocky.

Then, he’s excited about taking his glamorous Burn cigar lounge beyond Florida. He’ll open eight more Burns across the US and possibly in Berlin and Dubai — and perhaps, India — over the next two years. “We’re trying to take that idea global,” he says. So, he was in talks for a Burn in Mumbai.

“We’re hoping they can relax the laws,” says Rocky, who’s been regularly visiting India since 1974, when his family moved to the US. His parents now live in Vadodara. He adds ambitiously: “And yes, I’d love to open a cigar factory in India because I believe we have the cottage industry type of labour for that. We’d be proud to say that we’ve got a great quality cigar
being made in India.”

Well, he’s sure to use all his marketing mojo to convince Prime Minister Narendra Modi if he meets him, as scheduled, in the spring. But then, Rocky is quite a star on the cigar circuit. He’s constantly hopping across the US, Europe and Asia, promoting his brands, which include bestsellers like The Edge, the Decade and the Vintage. According to Mottola, Rocky’s is a “fan-friendly company”. He says: “Rocky has been successful in conveying an image that says great cigars can be
affordable and fun. Every year, we invite Rocky to the Cigar Aficionado Big Smoke [show]. It’s a marvel to see the long lines that people are willing to wait in just to shake the guy’s hand.”

Rocky’s brother and the company’s executive vice-president, Nish, who travels 250 days a year marketing their cigars in the US, says: “I’ve seen Rocky sign people’s bald heads. I’ve seen husbands bring their wives and ask him to sign on their chest. It’s crazy.”

Adds the ne’er-stops-marketing Rocky: “I changed the entire industry in the US. I went to 600 cities in 700 days and did events with retailers and met consumers. Cigar company owners had never done that before. It made everyone change their lives. Now they curse me saying, ‘We have no life’.” It’s what helped him build his brand and gain his suppliers’ trust. Mottola says: “Lots of companies have great brands, but Rocky got in front of his, made himself the face behind the cigar and really put in the effort to get to know his own clientele. That goes a long way with cigar enthusiasts.”

Indeed, behind the glitz lies a tale of sheer grit. Rocky — and his brother Nish and cousin, Nimish Desai, who looks after the factories — are completely hand’s on, controlling everything from the farms to the factories. “Rocky is tireless. And he wants to be involved in every aspect of the cigar-making process, even the tedious, less glamorous parts,” says Mottola.

There are 24-25 mainstay Rocky Patel brands ranging from mild to full-bodied cigars. Plus, there are scores of private labels. The focus is always on “quality, quality, quality”. That means sourcing the best tobaccos. And then, creating the perfect cigar with perfectly cured tobaccos that don’t leave any “bad flavours in the mouth” — he ages some tobaccos for 12 years —
and which is “consistent” with “a good draw”, says Rocky. His stringent stan-dards mean high rejection rates at the factory. That’s why he doesn’t regard the “inconsistent” Cuban cigars as competition.

It wasn’t always like this. Rocky grew up in Mumbai and studied at Doon School before his parents moved to Wisconsin. That’s where Rocky did his high school and undergraduate studies before moving to law school in California and a career as an attorney in Hollywood.

He smoked his first cigar on a movie set. “I was around people like Stallone and Schwarzenegger. These guys were smokin’ cigars, so I started smokin’,” he recounts. Soon, he was smoking with celebrities at The Grand Havana Room in Beverly Hills. That’s where somebody approached him to start making cigars for fun.

This was the era of the Cigar Boom in the US. So, Rocky and his partner founded the Indian Tabac Cigar Company
in 1995.  “I had somebody else making cigars and working on the brand then,” he says. Still, he started building up his frequent flyer points travelling to Nicaragua, Honduras and the Dominican Republic, learning all he could by spending time at the farms and barns, and by “making thousands of blends to educate my palate”.

He blended his first big cigar, the Indian Tabac Super Fuerte, in 1997. But he didn’t always get the best tobaccos. So, in 1998, he decided to take over the operations and began implementing stringent quality controls.

The industry laughed off his efforts initially. But it only made him more determined. Nish, who joined the company in 2004, says: “He has been very competitive since he was a kid. If somebody says he can’t do something, it makes him want to do it more.” Adds Rocky: “I wanted to make the best cigars. I was very driven and I wasn’t going to take no for an answer.”

By 2002, confident of his quality, he “put my name on the cigars”, renaming the company Rocky Patel Premium Cigars. And by 2004, it took off with cigars like The Edge. Now, Rocky has his own factory in Nicaragua and five years ago, he also invested in his own farms there.

So will Rocky Patel become the biggest cigar company in the world next? Says Rocky: “I don’t wake up thinking about that. I wake up thinking about making the best quality and most consistent cigars in the world. We’re not looking to becoming the biggest. We’re just looking to be the best.”