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Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Hail to the Cigar and Cigar Smoker - How rare we are these days

The best adventure stories used to start in the smoking-room after dinner. The hero, would throw another log on the fire, settle back in a deep arm-chair and light up his favorite cigar. There would be a long pause while he lit up and then he'd say to his companion: 'Did I ever tell you how we caught up with that German spy, Richter?' 

 There was something ritualistic and reassuring about that pause while he lit up. Whatever the thrills and spills along the way he was still alive to tell the tale – and to take a deep puff before he did so. The cigar has survived as a potent symbol. Its aroma still lingers in men’s clubs; men still draw comfort from the ritual of selecting, storing, cutting and smoking it. 

The Oldest established of all in London (and my go to place for great cigars for many many years) is Robert Lewis of 19 St James's Street, SW1, established in 1787. With a regular stock of over £500,000 worth of cigars in their basement, Robert Lewis can justifiably claim to carry one of the largest and widest ranges of cigars anywhere. 

Here you will find Cuban Havana cigars are the best-sellers, but also supply cigars made in Jamaica, the Canary Islands, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico.

Three customers who must have been particularly well-recognized were Edward VII, Sir Winston Churchill and Groucho Marx. Churchill bought most of his cigars there from 1900 to 1964, while Napoleon III presented the firm with a plaque, and Edward Vlll bequeathed them his own cigar box. 

 The most important aspect of cigar appeal is ritual. Like food, religion, marriage, death or politics, man quickly clothes most of his activities in ritual if he possibly can.

 Another crucial factor in the allure of cigar smoking must be romance: and nowhere can there be a more romantic name for a cigar than the best-known of all, Romeo y Julieta. The name is magical!!!

No doubt Freud could have expounded at length on what that precise need really is. Meanwhile, the cigar smokers will tell you that it's all quite simply a matter of taste and enjoyment. Cigar smokers really do enjoy puffing away and because their cigars clearly offer a familiar, reassuring pleasure all wrapped up in mystique, ritual, romance and filled, perhaps, with a little adventurous exploration along the way.

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