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Cigars in Boston

Welcoming the Dems with a Few Good Smokes

Bennett J. Alexander
Posted: July 23, 2004

In an effort to bring you the best and most timely information, in one evening I ventured into the heart of impending lunacy to bring you, the delegate, the journalist, the spin doctor and the curious, the skinny on where to smoke in Boston. I visited three of Boston's cigar bars just before the Democrats convene. A word of caution: do not try this at home.

Simply put, finding a comfortable place to have a cigar in Boston became difficult a year or so ago when the city fell under restrictive regulations and became more difficult on July 1, 2004, when a Massachusetts law took effect. For a cigar bar to operate, for example, it must derive 60 percent or more of its revenues from tobacco sales. This can be a delicate balance and a bit schizophrenic for the establishments that are in the business. They need to sell more from their humidor than from their bar. The result is that two of the three destinations I'm going to tell you about don't serve spirits and stay open for long hours to pump up tobacco sales. If you're in Boston the last week of July for convention business -- the program begins at 4 p.m. each of the four days -- you have plenty of daylight to enjoy Cigar Masters or Churchill's. Stanza dei Sigari is a strictly nocturnal adventure. Where you end up depends in large measure on where you're staying.

Cigar Masters
Cigar Masters is a classic cigar café that you would have found prevalent in the mid-1990s at the height of the cigar boom, which is around the time the establishment opened on Newbury Street, Boston's major shopping district. This Back Bay oasis, which for the past two years has been at its new location on Boylston Street, is full of plush leather couches and a comfortable bar between the front and back rooms. Brooke Leahy, the general manager, says the bar usually gets busy around 9 p.m., after diners from any of a number of steak houses or fine restaurants wander in. Before the smoking ban, they could have stayed at, say, Morton's (a block away) and enjoyed an after-dinner cigar.

"We had more regulars before the smoking ban," Leahy says. "Now we have more drop-ins." Leahy thinks Cigar Masters will attract a good number of Democrats during the convention. She pauses and remembers to be inclusive.

"We try to be nonpartisan," Leahy says, clearly implying that Boston is a Democrat stronghold. "We'll welcome Republicans as much as we usually do."

Cigar Masters has a fairly large humidor and a very wide selection of beers, wines and Ports. No hard liquor here. The biggest-selling cigar brand is Ashton, but you can opt for a Padrón Anniversario Torpedo for $22.50 or a $4 Macanudo Caviar Café. Take note: if you want to smoke a cigar you brought with you, there's a $10 "lighting fee." That's how Cigar Masters, open from 10 a.m. to midnight, helps keep the revenue split on the right side of the smoking laws.

Cigar Masters
745 Boylston Street
Boston
617-266-4400
10 a.m. to midnight

Churchill's Lounge at David P. Ehrlich Co.
Churchill's Lounge is housed inside the second-oldest tobacco store in the United States. (Can you name the oldest?) Founded in 1868, Ehrlich has been owned by only two families, the Ehrlichs and, now, the Macdonalds.

"We're hoping the Democrats are thirsty," Barry Macdonald explains says. If they are, they'll Churchill's will have beer, wine and Port available. Macdonald says that not offering spirits was a conscious decision based on the cost of the liquor license and the management of the 60 percent sales threshold for tobacco. The single-malts would tilt the balance, don't you know.

The establishment, truly divided between tobacco store and bar, is open from 9 a.m. to midnight. Like almost any other bar in town, the conversation is less convention and more the sorry state of the Red Sox. Jim, the bartender, explains that a colleague is distressed by the previous evening's loss to the Orioles.

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