Master Class: Cigars & Bourbon

Miguel Solano

Lead Author, The Modern Cigar Library

Miguel Solano started smoking cigars in 1997 when his friend Augusto Reyes handed him a Fuente Hemingway Short Story at a lounge in Coral Gables. That cigar changed his life. Since then he has built a career in the premium cigar industry that has taken him to factories in Nicaragua, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic, to fermentation warehouses in Cuba, and to every PCA trade show since the late 1990s. He consults with boutique producers, maintains relationships with distributors and retailers across the Americas, and writes the books he wishes had existed when he was learning. He lives in South Florida with his wife Liliana, who manages the spreadsheets that track his cigar spending, and their cigar friends who fill the screened porch his late father Gerardo used to sit on every night.