Last time Mo Maali was on the show, he told us that if he was ever in the area, he’d come sit in the garage. We said “sure, Mo” and never expected to see him. Then Jim got a call that Mo was in Pennsylvania, and a few hours later the owner of Patina Cigars was sitting in our garage with his broker, Cameron, and a Chicago hat on in the middle of Gilbertsville.
We’ve had guests in the garage before, but never a brand owner. We even moved the recording to a Thursday so everyone could catch the Phillies playoff game afterward. That’s how seriously we took it.
Quick disclosure: Mo and Cameron handed out Patina cigars when they arrived, and several of the Patinas we smoked on camera came from that. Nobody asked us to say anything in particular, and we didn’t hold back on the ribbing.
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Life on the Road With a Cigar Broker
Cameron works for Impact Force, a broker outfit that covers 26 states, and he was the first person with that job title we’ve had on the show. Mo explained the idea: bigger companies keep their own sales reps, while brokers let smaller brands have people on the road without a full in-house team. Cameron is based in Harrisburg and covers Pennsylvania and the Mid-Atlantic, which means a lot of turnpike tunnels and a lot of cops on the way to Pittsburgh.
His take on the job is that people see the 20% where he’s sitting in a lounge with a cigar and miss the 80% that’s phone calls, driving, and hotel rooms at 11 at night. Mo added that when he picks brokers, the question isn’t only whether they can sell. It’s whether he can spend hours in a car with them. Cameron has ridden along with Mo twice this year, so we’ll let you draw your own conclusions about how that went.
The best road story came from the night before. Cameron stopped for gas on the way to Philly and realized he’d left his wallet at home. On the way back he noticed a headlight was out, which with no license on him was a good way to get pulled over. They stopped at an Advance Auto, bought bulbs, and spent about 30 minutes in the parking lot swapping one out. Total damage was $76 for two bulbs, because they replaced the wrong one first, and when Cameron touched the other one it just came back on. It had been loose the whole time. Mo held the flashlight. Cameron offered to drop him at the hotel and handle the wallet run alone, and Mo said there was zero chance of that, so they did the whole drive together.
They’d also lunched at John’s Roast Pork that day, which led to the cheesesteak debate. Three sandwiches for about $30, with Mo and Cameron each finishing one and a half. The owner checked on them twice and thanked them more than once. Then someone mentioned ketchup, and the room split. Marinara on a steak is a Berks and Montgomery County thing, ketchup is a sacrilege to most of us, and a couple of guys admitted to using it in emergencies. Mo is a Chicago guy, so his answer was giardiniera, which he puts on everything. He wants to try it on a cheesesteak and likes his well done, with the onions almost burnt.
What We Smoked and What’s Coming From Patina
Most of us were smoking Patina, since the brand was the point of the night. Several of us had the Sumatra, one had the Connecticut, and one had the Red Pill. Rob lit a Tatuaje from the 20th anniversary limited collection. He admits he rarely smokes their core line, but he loves the limiteds, and the Boris Karloff is his favorite of the bunch.
Later in the night Eddie gave Mo a Crowned Heads Court in the Sublime size. The cigars are discontinued, and Eddie found a box from 2018 while traveling for work. Mo lit it and guessed by taste that it was made at EP Carrillo, then told us it wasn’t a Patina but it was pretty good. The crew was impressed he could pick out a factory by flavor.
On what’s next, the big news is a sequel to Verdigris. Mo and Tyler are bringing back the original blend in about 200 bundles. He was quick to say they weren’t found in the back of a warehouse. They were rolled about a year ago and have been aging, since he says a blend takes at least six months to come together. A second project takes the Verdigris blend, which has a habano and candela barber pole look, and runs it in a Connecticut barber pole. He said the blend translated better than he expected. The Red Pill Sumatra should land around December or January.
He’s also working on a broadleaf Corallina with no ETA, and a hand-rolled 5×33 cigarillo-style smoke with a habano wrapper, Connecticut filler trimmings, and a Mexican San Andres binder. A Red Pill in a 4×52 might happen, but he doesn’t want to flood the lineup. The brand’s 4×50 size came out of the 2019 polar vortex in Chicago, when it was too cold to sit outside with a longer cigar and gloves on. Retailers don’t always stock it, but he says it does well online.
Where the Red Pill Name Came From
The most interesting stretch of the night came when someone asked about the name. Mo’s story goes back to 2009 and 2010, when he worked for an accounting firm contracted by the FDIC and traveled the country helping close failed banks. He’d sit in the parking lot while FDIC staff went in and told everyone not to touch anything, then walk in and see people in tears. One small-town bank in Aurora, Minnesota, a town of about 300 people near the Canadian border, held land investments in Victorville, California. He couldn’t understand how that happened, so he started reading about how the financial system works. The more he read, the more it changed how he sees the world. That was his red pill moment, borrowed from The Matrix, and he recommends Michael Lewis’s book on the crisis over the movie (though the movie is solid).
Rob said his wife worked at Merrill Lynch when it was collapsing, and that HR just phoned people one at a time while the rest of the room waited for their own call. Mo said much of it was numbers in a ledger worth whatever someone said they were. He’s also grateful to the people who got Patina through its early days: Michael at Impact Force, and the Montecristo lounge owners in Chicago, where he managed a store around 2016 to learn the retail side. He says that without their support Patina wouldn’t have survived its first year.
The night ended the way it usually does here, with more cigars, a little talk about our Facebook and YouTube numbers, and Mo asking whether anyone had a better offer than another smoke. Nobody did. We’re already planning to see if Cameron shows up next Tuesday unannounced.
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