About

GORDON MOTT is no stranger to war and international terrorism.

As a foreign correspondent, he started his career with the Associated Press, covering the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua, the civil war in El Salvador, and the genocide of indigenous tribes in Guatemala.

On the morning of 9/11, Mott was serving as Executive Editor of Cigar Aficionado, a post he held for 23 years. From the magazine’s headquarters in lower Manhattan, he spotted the first plane flying toward the Twin Towers at an unusually low altitude, and from that instant he was thrown into the horrors of the terror attack and their wrenching aftermath.

Two years later, the traumas of 9/11 were still haunting him, every time he set foot in Grand Central Station. Then and there the first seeds of 10/10 were sown.

Mott was born in Lafayette, Indiana, and spent two different times in Brazil while growing up; his father was a university professor and those two Brazil sojourns were for his sabbatical years. Mott moved to Florida in 1968 where he attended Gainesville High School, and was captain of the school’s basketball team his senior year; the Purple Hurricanes won the Florida State Championship in 1969 when Mott was a junior. He attended Harvard College, entering with the class of 1974. He graduated with cum laude honors in 1975 after spending a year backpacking in Latin America between his sophomore and junior years. After his time with the AP, he served as bureau chief in Mexico for the San Jose Mercury News. In 1985, he moved to Paris where he worked as a freelancer, and where he began a love affair with food and wine. He worked for Newsweek in New York for a year after his return to the United States in 1988, and then joined M. Shanken Communications in 1990. In 1992, he helped Marvin R. Shanken launch Cigar Aficionado and turn it into a highly successful magazine.

Over the years, Mott has written extensively about Cuba, and he has contributed to The New York Times, Travel and Leisure, and Food and Wine magazines. Since 1981, he has been married to Donna Lilly. They have one daughter, Elizabeth. They live in Queretaro, Mexico, and have a dog named Tequila.