People sometimes ask me why we decided to create a new cigar house. It's a fair question. After all, the world is hardly short of cigars—or cigar brands.

The answer, however, is surprisingly simple, Monte-Carlo Club® was never born from a cigar, it was born from people.

Natalia and I have been fortunate enough to travel extensively. Travel has a remarkable way of teaching you that the most beautiful things are rarely the most obvious. More often than not, they are hidden behind an unassuming door, inside a workshop no one talks about, or in the hands of an artisan with absolutely no interest in becoming famous.

Over time, one idea kept returning. What fascinates us is never just the finished object. It is the story that comes before it.

A fine watch is never just a watch.

A great wine is never simply a wine.

And an exceptional cigar is certainly much more than tobacco wrapped in a beautiful leaf.

Behind each one stand women and men, decisions, doubts, years of patience and, more often than not, a healthy dose of stubbornness.

Those are the stories that truly matter. When we began imagining Monte-Carlo Club®, we didn't start with a cigar band, a box or even a blend. We started with a single question.

Who do we want to build this House with?

Everything else would follow.

Over the years, we have met tobacco growers, master torcedores, box makers, printers, ring manufacturers, craftsmen and passionate people who speak about their work with remarkable humility.

They all have something in common. They genuinely love what they do. And that changes everything.

This Journal exists because of them.

Not to tell you about our daily lives. Certainly not to promote our cigars.

But to open doors that usually remain closed.

To take you inside a cigar factory. To introduce you to a tobacco leaf long before it becomes a cigar.

To present the women and men whose names never appear on a box, yet whose hands make every cigar possible.

Monte-Carlo Club® may well be a cigar house.

But I prefer to think of it as a House built on encounters.

Welcome to our Journal.

I hope you will enjoy reading it as much as we will enjoy writing it.

By Maxime Navarre Founder of Monte-Carlo Club®