Humidores Wacota in ‘Cigar Journal’

The premium cigar magazine ‘Cigar Journal’ has dedicated a lovely article to us in its May/June issue. Entitled “When Juancar met Marco”, it begins by telling the story of how the two partners, Marco Torres and Juan Carlos (“Juancar”) Roncero, met. And how, 20 years later, that relationship has resulted in the international expansion of Humidores Wacota without losing its essence.

That essence being that of the carpentry shop of Juancar’s father, Calixto Roncero, which he later took over. The carpentry shop entered the world of tobacco almost by chance, when a Habanos executive hired them to set up a bookshop in his house. The quality that was given to the client led to the first order, the Monarca model humidor, which forty years later is still in the catalogue.

The beginnings of Wacota were not easy because the humidor market in Spain was very small when this synergy emerged. “The aficionados would go to the tobacconist, buy a cigar and smoke it,” explains Marco in the report, written by Javier Blanco. “There wasn’t a culture like there is today of keeping cigars at home,” he adds.

So at first it was the industry that acquired humidors as point-of-sale displays in their stores. Then little by little, tobacconists were also introducing humidors in their offerings and talking to their customers about the need to have one as the perfect method of storing cigars in the best conditions.

“Nowadays, keeping cigars in a humidor is seen as a necessity,” explains Marco

Eventually, the rise of social media helped demand to skyrocket. “Many smokers now consider having a humidor at home to be an important part of the smoking culture. Storing cigars is seen as something necessary, something that is part of the pleasure of smoking,” Marco explains.

Our main markets are now, in addition to Spain, France, Germany, Scandinavia and the Middle East, as ‘Cigar Journal’ highlights in its publication. We not only manufacture and sell humidors from our catalogue, we also adapt them to the tastes and needs of our customers, or make new peronalised designs according to their requests.

All of this growth has also forced us to open a showroom in Madrid. People called us because they wanted to see humidors and as we don’t have much stock in the carpentry shop, we decided to open a place where we could show off some of our models. In addition to showing many of our humidors, we have set up the Humidores Wacota office there. It works by appointment only, so please call us and we will show you the premises and our humidors.