Word: cigare
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Preliminary data suggest numbers that are even better. About 38% of upscale cigar buyers are also millionaires. Better than 4 out of 5 own at least two cars; nearly two-thirds collect antiques; 60% wear a $500-plus watch, while 90% traveled abroad in the past year. This type of demographics can lure a lot of upscale advertisers...
...cigar's lineage goes all the way back to Christopher Columbus, whose sailors took a liking to West Indian tobacco, rolled into palm or maize leaf, which they then took back home. Spanish nobles picked up the habit, and merchants spread it to the rest of Europe. By some accounts, Spain took more wealth out of the New World in tobacco than in gold and silver. In the American colonies, the cigar became a symbol of winner-take-all capitalism and flinty frontier grit...
While tobacco was the cash crop of choice in many parts of the New World, 20th century smokers singled out Cuba as the prestige producer of quality cigars. When the U.S. placed an embargo on Castro's communist economy in 1962, the forbidden Cuban premiums took on mythical qualities. For the truly devout, the mythic Cuban cigar has a heavy and rich aromatic taste that generally milder and sweeter cigars from the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Jamaica cannot match...
...Premium cigars, unlike machine-made cigars, are constructed of whole tobacco leaf compressed by hand into the "long" filler, which is held together by whole-leaf binders and wrappers. Serious smokers debate tobacco blends and cigar construction almost as passionately as wine lovers worry about tannin content. Consolidated Cigar executive vice president Richard L. Dimeola offers some tips to the novice: if it draws too easily, it was "underfilled," and the air pockets will cause a fast burn and a hot smoke. If possible, check the cigarmaker's "leaf inventory." If the company isn't stocking enough tobacco to skip...
Secure as they are among their own kind, cigar worshippers must suffer in a world increasingly hostile to their habit. Even if you're smoking a good cigar, observes Dunhill executive Dickson Farrington, "you can't walk into a store in New York off the street or get into a cab. I've heard about company presidents whose wives won't let them smoke at home, so they volunteer to walk the dog." The standoff probably suits both sides. Endangered male traditions continue to endure behind closed doors, allowing the rest of the world to breathe easier...