More About Michael Herklots
Michael Herklots has worked in the premium cigar industry since 1999. He began his career in Boston while attending Berklee College of Music, where he earned a degree in Drum Set Performance. After graduating in 2002, he moved to New York City and joined Davidoff of Geneva, spending nine years with the company and ultimately overseeing its New York retail operations.
In 2011, Michael joined Nat Sherman, where one of his first projects was creating a new cigar with the Quesada family in the Dominican Republic. That cigar became the Timeless Collection, which launched nationally in 2012. The Timeless Collection No. 2 received 93 points and was named Cigar Aficionado’s #10 Cigar of the Year in its first year. Over the next nine years, Michael created the entire Timeless portfolio, working with manufacturing partners in the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Honduras. He also created the modern Epoca, Metropolitan Host Maduro and Metropolitan Habano, along with Nat Sherman’s limited editions beginning in 2012. Michael ultimately became Vice President of Nat Sherman International, overseeing the company’s premium cigar and accessory portfolio, global sales and distribution, and the Nat Sherman Townhouse in New York City.
Following the closure of Nat Sherman International in 2020, Michael and longtime colleague Brendon Scott formed Ferio Tego and acquired the Timeless and Metropolitan brands, along with Epoca and Ancora. Because premium cigar production had stopped following the sale of Nat Sherman to Altria, bringing the portfolio back after nearly two years required more than simply restarting production. Tobacco inventories and crops had changed, and Michael worked with each of the original manufacturing partners in the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Honduras to reevaluate and restore every blend.
That process included Metropolitan Connecticut, Metropolitan Maduro and Metropolitan Host, the only three blends in today’s portfolio that Michael did not originally create. All three predate his time at Nat Sherman, but each was reevaluated and adjusted as necessary to preserve its intended character when production resumed. While Michael does not claim original authorship of those three blends, he has now personally blended or re-blended every cigar in the Ferio Tego portfolio.
Ferio Tego launched in 2021 with Elegancia and Generoso, beginning an entirely new body of work alongside the returning brands. Michael has created every Ferio Tego blend and limited edition since, including Summa, while continuing to oversee Timeless and Metropolitan. His blending work spans manufacturing partners in the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Honduras and a broad range of tobaccos, origins and styles.
His work has earned significant recognition throughout both the Nat Sherman and Ferio Tego years. To date, cigars blended by Herklots have earned six placements on Cigar Aficionado’s annual Top 25 Cigars of the Year, beginning with the original Timeless Collection No. 2, which received 93 points and was ranked #10 in 2012. Ferio Tego received significant recognition from its debut in 2021, when Cigar Dojo named Ferio Tego its Brand of the Year and ranked Elegancia and Generoso the #1 and #3 Cigars of the Year, respectively, while Halfwheel named Ferio Tego New Company of the Year. More recently, Ferio Tego Summa was named Cigar of the Year by Blind Man’s Puff and appeared in Cigar Aficionado’s 2024 Top 25. In 2025, Timeless Supreme 650 received 95 points and was named Cigar Aficionado’s #10 Cigar of the Year, thirteen years after the original Timeless achieved the same ranking. Ferio Tego and its cigars have also received multiple Robb Report Best of the Best honors.
Michael remains a musician as well as a cigar blender, and his background in jazz continues to influence the way he approaches his work. Both require an understanding of structure, balance and technique, but ultimately the work is in service of the experience. Herklots believes one shouldn’t need to understand how something was made in order to enjoy it.