The History of Cigars
Cigars, and more specifically, premium handmade cigars, have a long and fascinating history. Although Native Americans were smoking cigars or some crude, early version of them well before Columbus got there, the discovery of tobacco started with his famous 1492 voyage shortly after dropping anchor off the shores of Hispaniola.
The credit for this discovery actually goes to two members of his crew, Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de Torres. Upon meeting the people of the island, one of the things they were offered were dried tobacco leaves. However, it wasn’t until Columbus had settled in what is now Cuba that de Jerez & de Torres had smoked their first “cigars.” These cigars “rolled” by the Taino Indians were actually dried, twisted tobacco wrapped in plantain and palm leaves.
The word “cigar” comes from the Mayan word, “sikar” which literally meant “to smoke.” Taking a cue from the Mayan word, the Spanish used ‘cigarro’ for smoking tobacco, and by 1730 “cigar” had become the more widely used appellation.
When Columbus’s ship returned to Europe with these curious tobacco-hewn objects, it didn’t take long for the enjoyment of tobacco to spread across the continent as a popular form of social interaction. But it was Jean Nicot, the French Ambassador to Portugal who also studied the weed and lent his name to its active ingredient, “nicotine.” Tobacco’s popularity eventually spread to Italy where it was not only smoked, but grown in the Vatican gardens. It wasn’t until after Sir Walter Raleigh returned with tobacco from The New World that it took root in England, where it was used primarily for pipes. Cigars came later.
The first tobacco plantations sprung up in Cuba in the early part of the 17th century, though it had been grown and exported commercially since the mid 16th century. Later, in 1763, during the British occupation of Cuba, coffee took a back seat to tobacco, which became the leading cash crop. Ultimately, tobacco became so valuable it was even used as currency.
Although Cuba eventually became the leading manufacturer of premium handmade cigars as we know them today, Spain preceded Cuba as the first country to roll and manufacture cigars on a mass market level. By the mid 19th century, cigar manufacturing had become a viable industry in The United States, and by the century’s end cigars were being marketed under various brand names. By the turn of the 20th century it’s estimated that four out of five men in the United States were cigar smokers. And by 1905, cigar-making operations had grown to 80,000, though most of them were small, family-owned and operated factories.
The center of American production was Tampa, Florida. In the 1860s, Vicente Martinez Ybor, a cigar maker in Key West, moved his Principe de Gales cigars operation to a section of Tampa, which we know today as Ybor City. His factory, along with Flor de Sánchez and Haya, who preceded him, became a magnet for more cigar manufacturers.
By this time, tobacco growing and the production of cigars was being done as far away as Indonesia, as well as in many other countries, but it was Havana, Cuba that reigned as the source for the world’s finest handmade cigars, and in some circles, Cuban cigars still reign supreme.
It wasn’t until Fidel Castro and his rebels took control of Cuba in 1959 that everything changed. Many of Cuba’s most revered cigar-making families such as Padron, Toraño, and Camacho, to name but a few, left, taking their secrets, and their seeds, for that matter, to Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, and The Dominican Republic, formerly Hispaniola, where Columbus touched down 500 years earlier!
It didn’t take long before these Caribbean locale countries were producing cigars that rivaled Cuba’s, and continue to do so today, not to mention Nicaragua which has been referred to by many as the “new Cuba.”
The Dominican Republic still produces more than half of the premium handmade cigars sold in the United States. Some of these brands have familiar Cuban names such as Partagas and Romeo y Julieta, as well as Macanudo cigars, which were introduced in 1968 and originally produced in Jamaica.
Cigars were commonly seen in movies and usually associated with the rich, but since the cigar boom of the mid-1990′s premium cigars have become a source of pleasure for tobacco lovers regardless of their pedigree. Plus, due to the naturally competitive environment of the cigar business and the availability of large stocks of tobacco, premium handmade cigars are much more affordable today as well.
Although the industry has been fraught with heavy taxation and smoking bans worldwide in the past few years, cigars have survived and continue to be a great source of pleasure for millions of people who simply want to relax and enjoy “the good life” with a good cigar.
Famous Smoke Shop is the leading retailer of cigars online – operating multiple websites geared to cigar enthusiasts:
