A Decade to Remember

Against all odds, Cigar Aficionado magazine launched in 1992 and triggered one of the most unexpected cultural phenomena of the '90s: the cigar renaissance

Gordon Mott
From the Print Edition:
10th Anniversary Issue, Nov/Dec 02

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More importantly, the cigar boom altered the perception of cigars in the United States, and perhaps around the world. Theo Folz, the Altadis president and CEO, says that the cigar went from "some kind of Edgar G. Robinson image with the cigar stuck out the side of his mouth, to a thing of elegance. It became the in thing. It was hip and fashionable." He believes that evolution also helped open the market to more people. "I believe there are at least twice as many, maybe even three times as many cigar smokers today in the United States than there were in 1992," Folz adds.

Levin, the Holt's Cigar Holdings owner, says that despite the tremendous fall-off in demand after 1997, "business is real good. We may not be seeing a lot of new customers, but we have a strong base. People are enjoying their cigars."

It was October 1991. Marvin R. Shanken had just returned from his first trip to Cuba with James Suckling, a Wine Spectator writer, having spent a week there working on a story for Wine Spectator magazine. On board the plane coming home to America, Shanken decided that he wanted to publish a cigar magazine. He walked into my office the following week and said, "How you'd like to work on a cigar magazine?" In subsequent years, I've said a thousand times that I thought he was having a bad day. But nine months after his question, the first issue of Cigar Aficionado was finished, a 158-page issue filled with stories about cigars, a great article by Gay Talese about "Walking My Cigar," and a range of stories from a profile of Gregory Hines to collecting Lalique crystal.

The magazine was well received. But even now, 10 years later, Shanken remembers that he would have been happy to have "20,000 readers like myself, who loved cigars."

There will never be any way to know exactly why the cigar boom happened. Cigar Aficionado magazine? The desire of human beings to find ways to relax and enjoy themselves? A backlash against years of harping by the health police? The vision of one man who saw a niche for something that he had a passion for. Who knows? What is clear is that the boom has secured a place in American culture for the cigar. While new taxes and stringent antismoking rules may make it more and more difficult to find public places in which to enjoy a cigar in the years ahead, there will always be a place for a good cigar in the United States.

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