In this episode of "Smoke Rings," I had the opportunity to chat with Tim Ozgener of Oz Family Cigars. Learn more about the brand, the blends they offer, and more in this informative interview.

[Tyler Caldwell]: I'm here with Tim Ozgener of Oz Family Cigars. We want to give you a little rundown about the blends and the history of the company.

Tim Ozgener's Experience With Cigars

[Tim Ozgener]: Thank you very much for having me on. I have been in this business for over 40 years. I started with my father whose initials were CAO, so we started the brand CAO in 1968, selling everything from pipes to humidors and then cigars. That's where I cut my teeth.

We sold the brand in 2007 and then Oz Family Cigars came out in 2022. I missed cigars, and I love the cigar business. That's kind of my background and heritage so I wanted to utilize all that knowledge that I had built up through the years to create some new blends and new portfolios for the cigar-smoking aficionados to enjoy.

[TC]: So in between the years of CAO selling and Oz Family being created, what was life like for you? What were you doing in that time period?

[TO]: My father and I converted our warehouse that was used for CAO into a non-profit contemporary performing arts center. We would bring in living artists from all kinds of genres of contemporary performing arts, from theater to music to dance, and also capture local artists in Nashville, Tennessee, and bring them to schools that don't have arts programming. It was something that we dedicated 10 to 12 years to establish.

I still love cigars because I love to experience the taste and the complexity of cigars, as well as the camaraderie when people are enjoying cigars together.

[TC]: Very cool. So you've essentially always kept everything in the form of art within your life.

[TO]: Right. Yeah, it's true.

[TC]: Like we've said, in our industry, this is an art form. This is handmade.

Oz Family Cigars' Iconography

Let's break down a little bit what we've got on the table.

[TO]: When we first started, we knew we needed to present who we are, the family heritage, and what was important to us to connect to the consumers.

My father is Armenian, born in Istanbul, Turkey, and so on the right-hand side of the icon is Mount Ararat in Armenia, which is an important spiritual icon for Armenians, and is a source of pride. That represents my father's background there but then he grew up in Istanbul, Turkey, as an Armenian. At the time, it was a very multicultural city. It's a place where Europe and Asia come together, separated by the Bosphorus Strait, that goes between the European side of Istanbul and also the Asia Minor side of Istanbul so we use that in the iconography.

Then he and my mother met in New York City. So the Statue of Liberty in the United States is a symbol of what we view as the greatest country in the world and one where you can come in and you have a lot of ample opportunities if you're hard-working and you seek to make a better life for yourself. That's what they did and they eloped to Nashville, Tennessee. All of this is kind of captured in what the iconography is.

Bosphorus

Our first blend here that we came up with in 2022 is called Bosphorus after the Bosphorus Strait in Istanbul. We wanted the blend to be really complex with a lot going on, but that was one that if somebody liked milder cigars, they could also enjoy.

The wrapper on it is Havana 2000 seed grown in Ecuador. It's got a double binder; one is Jalapa from Nicaragua and the other is Connecticut Ecuador. Most cigars that we did in the past, we never did a double binder. Somebody suggested it because it would afford a more layered sensation or flavor profile on the palate so we liked it and that's what we went with.

The fillers are from three different areas of Nicaragua: Estelí, where all the factories are with more of a volcanic soil, offering a bit more peppery flavor; Jalapa where it's a little more coffee grown in the region, with finer, sandier soil, and a bit of a sweeter flavor profile on the palate; and then Ometepe, the volcanic island in Nicaragua, which helps kind of marry and bring all of these tobaccos together.

[TC]: It sure does.

[TO]: I'm proud to say that we have four different vitolas for this blend and all four of them have gotten massive ratings in Cigar Aficionado, with a 93, 93, 92, and 90.

The Robusto was in the top 25 best cigars of the year when it came out.

Aramas

The next one is our Aramas blend. This was influenced by Mount Ararat in Armenia. That name is representative of that.

It has that Veuve Clicquot Orange background, and it is a Mexican San Andrés Maduro. This cigar is for people who really love the Maduro profile. I likened this to being like a dark chocolate with Creole spices. You get a lot of the dark chocolate flavor profile from the Mexican San Andrés wrapper and the binder is Sumatran-seed Ecuador, and the fillers have Dominican Corojo from La Canela in the center, which gives it this nice Creole spice.

We also have some Jalapa tobacco that is from the viso portion of the plant, which gives it a nice kind of caramelized flavor to it. We put a half leaf of Connecticut Broadleaf Maduro from the United States in the filler too to underline, accentuate, and compliment the Maduro.

Firsat

Then we also have a third one: our Firsat blend. It is very much influenced by the iconography of the Statue of Liberty. "Firsat" is a Turkish word that means opportunity. It's just a lot shorter to call it Firsat than Opportunity.

That cigar has a Tiffany blue-colored vista and footband. My father's favorite blend when we had CAO was one called CAO Gold, which had a Connecticut Ecuadorian seed and the wrapper. The fillers are all Nicaraguan, but they're Nicaraguan that are less harsh and more from the sweeter region of Nicaragua, with a lot of accentuation on the Jalapa region.

It's a very pleasant cigar. You get a lot of really creamy, cedary, and buttery notes to it. We put a little bit of Ometepe tobacco in there so it's got a hint of white pepper on there, but it's not too overwhelming. That's what my dad liked to smoke. He wanted a blend that was easygoing and easy to smoke at any time of the day.

Pi Synesthesia

[TC]: Very cool. Those three are regular-production cigars from Oz Family. You also have some limited-edition cigars. Let's tell the folks about that.

[TO]: My father painted a lot in the last 10 years of his life, and he painted around a concept called Synesthesia. That's the concept of associations. For example, if I say a number to you, you think of a color that comes to mind. For some people, it's a musical tone or note, and for others, it's a flavor.

My father thought it was really interesting from an artistic standpoint to paint the colors. He liked the number pi because he was an engineer and he was fascinated at the fact that pi is an infinite number. So he said, "I'm gonna do my own Synesthesia. I will make the number three yellow, the number one red, the number four brown, and so on."

When we were working on these blends, a gentleman I was working with had Synesthesia, but it was more with flavor. I showed him my father's art and we knew we wanted to follow a painting of Pi Synesthesia that my dad did, shrink it, and put it on the band.

If you look from left to right on the band, you'll see yellow, red, brown, blue, green. Then it becomes a year-long exercise for us to figure out what yellow looks and tastes like, and red, and our latest was brown.

For example, the brown one has a wrapper that is Mexican San Andrés. It's got more of a milk chocolate color to it. We wanted the flavor to be the good brown, not the bad brown. It's always interesting, and we usually do 1500 12-count boxes of them in a limited-edition release.

My father would sign all of his paintings with a simple C because his first name was Cano so we usually have his "C" signature on the box.

[TC]: Do you have any plans for the next color you're releasing?

[TO]: Yeah, so the next color, we're just going to follow how he painted them. Even though in the number pi, the next number is again one, we've already done red before so we're going to go to the next color after that, which is blue. That'll be an interesting one because, as you know, there's not a blue tobacco leaf.

[TC]: If your tobacco leaf is blue, you might want to stay away from it.

[TO]: When we're coming up with these blends, we try to understand what the market is. What are people looking for, what do we not have in our portfolio, and how can we present it in a way that people can understand very quickly?

Of course, you want it to always be a very high-quality cigar. As you know, the cigar business is not an easy business. It's very subjective, and your taste palate might be different than mine. We strive to present a broad swath of different flavors that you hope will resonate with people and exceed their expectations.

[TC]: Thank you for introducing Oz Family Cigars to anyone who might not have ever heard about your brand. If you like 'em, let us know in the comments.