Frank Llaneza

Frank Anthony Llaneza (1920–2010) was a tobacco blender and former executive of Villazon & Co. who is regarded as a pioneer in the resurgence of the premium cigar industry at the end of the 20th Century. Llaneza is best known for the creation and manufacture of a number of popular cigar brands in the years after the 1962 Cuban Embargo, including Hoyo de Monterrey, Punch, Bolivar, and Siglo.

Frank Llaneza was born on March 9, 1920 in Tampa, Florida. His father, José Llaneza, was a cigar maker who produced a brand in Ybor City known as Pancho Arango. An 11-month-long strike of tobacco workers bankrupted many of Tampa's cigar makers, however, including Frank's father. In the aftermath, the elder Llaneza went to work for the company of Schwab-Davis, one of the city's biggest cigar manufacturers as makers of the popular brand Rey del Rey.

During his time as a manager at Schwab-Davis, Frank's father launched another company with his three former business partners called José Arango. When Schwab-Davis was later sold to a company called Gradiaz-Annis, a forerunner of General Cigar Co., the elder Llaneza left the company's employ to devote himself full-time to his own new enterprise.

During his school years, Frank worked part-time in his father's factory, beginning work at age 15. Frank attended and graduated Jesuit High School in Tampa, from which he graduated in 1936.

Following graduation from high school, Frank Llaneza went to work in the cigar industry full-time beginning at his father's factory as an apprentice selector of tobacco leaf, helping to sort it for size, color, and quality.

With World War II on the horizon, Llaneza joined the United States Coast Guard in 1940. He served in the Gulf of Mexico and the North Atlantic through the end of the war in 1945.

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