Daniel Marshall – the Interview

Kevin Underwood
You sell 2 products, humidors and cigars – there is the Red and Black Label your latest product is the 24K golden cigar „DM Gold Torpedo“. Can you tell our readers something about your cigars? How did you come up with the idea of making a golden cigar? What is special about your humidor?

Establishing my own cigar brand was the logical and correct consequence of my success.

Daniel Marshall
The first cigar series was created in 1996. That was a real boom phase in the cigar industry. At that time, the top cigar producers could not produce cigars fast enough or the tobaccos did not grow fast enough.

Thanks to my friendship with Manuel Quesada from MATASA, who is a 5th generation cigar producer, I was able to negotiate a deal with him. I produced a special humidor packaging for a series of his cigars and he supplied me with 5,000 cigars a month in return.

Daniel Marshal mit Manolo Quesada 1996 | Fotocredit: Daniel MarshallThis is how my Black Label series came about. The wrapper of this cigar is a USA Conneticut Shade.

Then came the 2nd series from me, the Red Label. The Red Label was developed together with Manuel Quesada and Nestor Placencia from Nicaragua. The cigar is made from Nicaraguan tobacco (filler and binder) with a Habano wrapper, which was also grown in Nicaragua. In terms of aroma and taste, the cigar also has a sweet, slightly tart cocoa aftertaste. Earthy notes resonate from time to time.

The DM Torpedo Gold cigar came about by chance, just like my humidor business. In 2011, Universal Studios approached me and asked me to make a special humidor for their cult film Scareface, which was now to be released on Blue-Ray. They imagined white humidors limited to 1,000 pieces, with the inscription „THE WORLD IS YOURS“ and the initials of Tony Monatana.

When I finally met with a top manager of the film studio to sign the contract, he told me that he needed 20 special bling-bling humidors for the VIPs like Al Pacino. So one thing led to another. Of course, these 20 special humidors also needed special cigars. I sent the humidors to Swarovski so that the studio manager’s ideas could be realized. But what do I do with the cigars?

Daniel Marshall is the No. 1 bling-bling humidor specialist

In the evening, I had dinner with my girlfriend and told her about the cigars. After we talked about it for a while, she said – why don’t you make golden cigars? I thought about it for a moment and said words that I don’t often say „it’s not possible“. My friend then said, I don’t know anything about cigars but I’ve given you an idea, make the most of it.
After 3 months of working on how I could produce a cigar with pure gold, I found the solution. The result was a cigar made from 24 carat pure Italian gold. I was happy that I could also deliver the 20 special cigars and didn’t even think about making any more.