Industry veteran MICHAEL HERKLOTS lights up the cigar business with his new brand Ferio Tego…
At some point on the timeline you have to declare what you are for, against, and otherwise not concerned about. Back in the day if you stacked up enough dollars, your genes climbed from pond to dry land and memorialised such declarations on a shield. Future generations understood what got them there — and what they were supposed to do. Often it made it onto the seal on your signet ring too.
The Herklots coat of arms, and its motto Ferio Tego, is the logo of the new luxury cigar house founded by Michael Herklots and Brendon Scott. It shows Hercules beheading the Hydra, with the words Ferio Tego below. Meaning literally, “Strike and Defend.” Gordon Gekko, Patrick Bateman, and all you boys in Barbarians At The Gate can go eat your hearts out. Perhaps at Dorsia. With a fully fired-up Ferio Tego 50-gauge in each hand.
Perhaps Herklots’ background as a jazz drummer turned tobacconist explains his view of great cigars: “Creating a blend is like writing a song — it needs complexity and a story, but it also needs a chorus that everyone wants to sing at a wedding.” He’s one of those dapper characters everyone seems to like. Always well turned out, elegant, and understated with an eye for detail — like his vintage “Root Beer” Rolex GMT that was acquired inexpensively as no one wanted one back then. It doesn’t do any harm that a brown Rolex is the perfect statement for a cigar aficionado. Or that 20 years learning the devil in the detail of smoke-filled cigar rooms lays the perfect foundation to create your very own marque.
Over an afternoon of PM Spirits’ XO Armagnac and Ferio Tego cigars we discussed the meaning of life. Herklots sources his premium tobaccos from a transparent supply chain he has worked with for a long time. He ran Davidoff of Geneva’s retail operations in New York City for nine years, before taking global oversight of (now defunct) Nat Sherman for another ten.
But now it is Ferio Tego, full steam ahead, with Herklots selecting and blending tobacco to create the marque’s first offerings, a limited edition of two expressions, Elegancia and Generoso. As Herklots says, “I don’t want folks to just taste my cigars with their palates, I want them to feel my cigars in their very souls. When you cut and light a Ferio Tego and take that first puff — yes of course appreciate the complex flavours and delicate aroma, but also appreciate the passion and the love that went into those cigars… the hundreds of pairs of hands that have touched those leaves over years and years [and] assembled them in just the perfect way for you to enjoy it in that moment. It’s one and done like time itself; a moment with a cigar can’t be repeated, or replicated; just celebrated.”
Elegant and refined, though surprisingly bold, the Elegancia features radically complex flavours across the entire palate. An overwhelmingly full-bodied yet creamy smoke which boasts a mouthcoating density that preserves a fresh palate, and has a story to tell, evolving from start to finish with flavours of buttered toast and vanilla. The Generoso is engaging with its slow and deliberate development right to its final puff, and offers rich and generous dark flavors, in a dense velvety smoke that envelops the palate. Intense and savory, yet lush and dignified with notes of amaro, cassis and madeira. Both come in custom handmade travel humidors containing ten cigars.
As Herklots says, “I’ve been selling cigars for over 20 years. I’ve been creating cigars for ten of those 20. Ferio Tego is the manifestation of two decades of learning. It’s my heart and soul.”
By DUNCAN QUINN
Photo COURTESY RAVEN ADAMS
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