The man behind some of the best cigars in the world

The name of Jose Orlando Padron evokes the aroma and image of some of the best cigars in the world.

Mr. Padron, the founder of Padron Cigars, died Tuesday at Mercy Hospital in Miami. He was 91.

Until the very end, Mr. Padron remained loyal to his friends and his roots in the Cuban countryside.

“My father started the business with $600. One person rolled the cigars and he sold them at night,” said Jorge Padron, one of his four children and president of Padron Cigars.

The patriarch of the family was born in Consolacion del Sur in the western province of Pinar del Rio. His family, who came from the Canary Islands, worked on a tobacco farm in the Cuban region known as Vueltabajo, considered to be among the best tobacco areas in the world. Tobacco became Mr. Padron’s passion.

Mr. Padron left Cuba in 1961 for Madrid, so poor he had to beg on the streets of the Spanish capital. He quickly moved to New York, where he lived for a couple of months before moving to Miami. He mowed lawns and did carpentry work until he opened the cigar company in 1964.

In the 1970s, he opened a cigar factory in Nicaragua, still the source of much of the tobacco that Padron Cigars rolls into its cigars. The cigars are sold around the world as well as at its famed Little Havana store.

That factory burned down during Nicaragua’s civil war. The factory’s destruction was not at the hands of the Sandinista guerrillas nor supporters of the Somoza dictatorship, but by mobs that looted businesses.

By then, Mr. Padron had opened a factory in Honduras to roll Nicaraguan leaves. But President Ronald Reagan slapped an embargo on the Sandinista government in 1985, and the factory could no longer import tobacco from Nicaragua.

Mr. Padron returned to the island in 1979 with other Cuban exiles to speak with Fidel Castro’s government about political prisoners. The discussion led to the release of 3,600 prisoners, including some who had spent nearly 20 years behind bars.

Mr. Padron was photographed giving Castro a box of his cigars. Shortly thereafter, several bombs damaged his Miami store, then on Flagler Street and Southwest 16th Avenue.

“My father went to Cuba with the goal of helping,” said Jorge Padron, adding that many of his father’s old friends were freed from prison as a result of his work.

The business in Central America took off again when the U.S. embargo on Nicaragua was lifted in 1990. The Padron family had to revive the entire process of cigarmaking.

Today, the Padron brand is recognized as one of the best in the world.

It has received the best cigar of the year prize, awarded by the magazine Cigar Aficionado, three times since 2004.

“My father always told me that a person had to do three important things: value the family, respect the name, the legacy, and be grateful,” said his son.

The Padron family runs a foundation that supports causes such as health and education; it is planning to build a school in Esteli, Nicaragua.