In Memoriam: Sal Fontana

Last week, I spoke to Israel Markevitz, of Uptown Cigar Co. We spoke about a lot of things, he had mentioned that he had recently spoken to some of the folks from Drew Estate, who were in the area. Unfortunately, he told me that Jonathan Drew, Marvin Samel and a few others had come up from the Drew Estate factory to visit Sal Fontana, who was in a hospital nearby Uptown Cigar Co.’s current location. Wednesday afternoon, Sal Fontana passed away at the age of 86.

Sal Fontana, once the head of Caribe Imported Cigars, now Camacho, served as a personal mentor to many in the industry, including current Camacho head Christian Eiroa. Abe Dababaneh, who also lists Fontana as a mentor, points out his official title at Camacho, Consigliere.

Fontana is responsible for a lot of Camacho cigars, the Corojo and Triple Maduro, being the most notable today. However, if you smoke a cigar in tribute to him, perhaps the cigar made for the man, the La Fontana Consigliere. Rest in peace.

Photo via Jonathan Drew’s Flickr stream.

Charlie Minato

I am an editor and co-founder of halfwheel.com/Rueda Media, LLC. I previously co-founded and published TheCigarFeed, one of the two predecessors of halfwheel. I have written about the cigar industry for more than a decade, covering everything from product launches to regulation to M&A. In addition, I handle a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff here at halfwheel. I enjoy playing tennis, watching boxing, falling asleep to the Le Mans 24, wearing sweatshirts year-round and eating gyros. echte liebe.