| businesses are more romantic than others. | | | | inaugurated by Hermann Upmann, a German banker, |
| For example, compare winemaking with | | | | or by his family, who (to confuse matters further) |
| toothpick-making. Now, the wine business is, on a | | | | may have been named Hupmann. |
| day-by-day basis, anything but one ecstatic Cabernet | | | | 1845: Debut of Partagas and La Corona cigars, both |
| Sauvignon after another. You have to handle | | | | in Havana. |
| distribution, advertising, labor, storage - one prosaic | | | | 1850s: Tobacco's popularity scales new heights when, |
| detail after another. And the toothpick isn't nearly as | | | | during the Crimean War (1853-1856), Turkish tobacco |
| boring as it looks - science journalist Henry Petroski | | | | - the lusty, semi-sweet, full-flavored tobacco that |
| has devoted, in fact, an entire book to it, The | | | | makes Middle Eastern travel such a joy for the |
| Toothpick, which, critics say, makes unexpectedly | | | | nonallergic - achieves general availability in Europe for |
| fascinating reading. The toothpick even has its own | | | | the first time. Smoking rooms, smoking jackets, even |
| little place in literary history - it's the business by | | | | smoking caps and slippers become part of every |
| which Chad Newsome, hero of Henry James's great | | | | Victorian gentleman's home, and fashion plate Prince |
| novel The Ambassadors, is said to have earned his | | | | Edward, despite his mother Queen Victoria's |
| living. | | | | well-known hatred of smoking, promotes smoking by |
| Still - would you rather get seated at a party next to | | | | his own well-remarked example. In 1855, the decade's |
| a wine guy, or a toothpick guy? | | | | halfway point, Cuba exports 356.6 million cigars - a |
| Most of us would feel the same way about the cigar | | | | record yet to be equaled. |
| business - that it's somehow more exciting than most | | | | 1861: Birth of Swisher Cigars when Ohio businessman |
| other industries, including that of the workaday, | | | | Daniel Swisher, collecting a debt, is paid in the form |
| assembly-line-made cigarette. In this case, perhaps | | | | of a small cigar business. |
| history bears out our intuitions. Take a look at some | | | | 1861-1865: United States Civil War leads to further |
| of the great moments in the history of cigars, all | | | | popularity of cigar smoking, as young men away |
| taken from one tumultuous century - the nineteenth. | | | | from home (and under great stress) take up the |
| 1810: The branding of cigars begins in - where else? - | | | | habit. |
| Cuba, where the first two applications to register a | | | | 1865: To many contemporary Americans, the word |
| cigar brand are recorded: B. Rencurrel and Hija de | | | | "lector" makes us think of Hannibal. But for cigar |
| Cabanas y Carbajal. Also, cigar workshops appear for | | | | workers in Spanish-speaking countries, it has |
| the first time in the newly-minted United States. | | | | altogether more pleasant associations, because in this |
| 1817: Spain ends its monopoly over the tobacco | | | | year, the practice of hiring people to read to cigar |
| grown in its former colony, Cuba, when King | | | | rollers ("readers," or, in Spanish, "lectors") is |
| Ferdinand VII signs a bill allowing for private growing | | | | inaugurated in Cuba (where else?), at the El Figaro |
| and selling of tobacco, as well as cigar production and | | | | factory. This practice is so popular that, in 1868 and |
| sales. | | | | again in 1895, it is banned by the Cuban government |
| 1800s-1820s: Cigar manufacture spreads north from | | | | for a period (ten years the first time, three the |
| Spain to France, Germany, and (later) England. | | | | second). Apparently those cigar workers were |
| 1836: Cuba's cigar export market reaches 4.887 million | | | | getting too knowledgeable for (their rulers') comfort. |
| units and 306 factories, thanks in part to the lifting of | | | | Maybe we could bring this custom to other |
| the Spanish monopoly nineteen years earlier. | | | | industries? |
| 1837: Remember cigar boxes - those nostalgic, | | | | 1873: Romeo y Julieta cigars introduced by Inocencio |
| brightly-illustrated items that signify the higher | | | | Alvarez and Mannin Garcia. |
| standards of an earlier era in the history of product | | | | 1886: Ybor City neighborhood in Tampa, Florida, a |
| packaging? Well, that tradition begins in this year, | | | | regional center of cigar production, is founded by |
| when Ramon Allones creates his same-named cigar. | | | | Vincent Ybor. |
| His company is the first to use intricate lithography to | | | | 1898: Rudyard Kipling writes the line "A woman is a |
| set boxes of his cigars apart from other brands. | | | | just a women, but a good cigar is a smoke," linking |
| 1840: Tobacco grows in popularity, and cigar export | | | | misogyny and cigar-smoking in the minds of |
| from Cuba alone surpasses 141.6 million. | | | | thousands of Edwardian gentlemen. Generations of |
| 1844: H. Upmann, one of the most famous of all cigar | | | | female smokers and, later, female cigar execs will |
| brands, is introduced in Cuba. How's that spelled? No | | | | beg to differ. |
| one is really sure - the brand may have been | | | | |