Cigar Shop Black Book
My man in the field and Wm Brown cigar expert takes over the Weekly and shares the ultimate black book on where to buy cigars and places to smoke them
By Aaron Sigmond
(Most recent edit March 2023)
One early autumn evening, Matt and I caught up for a long-overdue cigar (a unicorn-status Arturo Fuente Don Carlos Lancero, to be precise) at one of our favorite Midtown Manhattan haunts, Aretsky’s Patroon. Its rooftop bar, metalsmithed from zinc and accented with teak-clad paneling, is the perfect smoke-friendly watering hole. His friend Jay Strell also joined us for a right proper cocktail hour that kicked off with an Aperol and soda.
In the course of our conversation we discussed our own LBB (little black books)—no, not that kind; Matt is with Yolanda and I with Melissa. A little black book of our favorite hangouts, whether bars, restaurants, wine merchants, watch shops or tobacconists. Much like the lists Matt often shares in this very newsletter, in fact. “Make a list of your go-to-cigar stores around the world,” he told me.
Naturally, I start with a bit of a backstory. When I entered the cigar trade, working my way through grad school as a manager of the Davidoff Beverly Hills flagship, the world of cigar merchants had its all-stars—a tobacco triumvirate, if you will: Nat Sherman in New York City, Davidoff in Geneva and Alfred Dunhill in London (the latter with global outposts that included Rockefeller Center in New York and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, which was just across from my shop).
If there were fourth and fifth members of this hierarchy they’d have been Gérard Père et Fils, also Geneva-based, and the Cohiba Cigar Divan in the Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong. That was pretty much the extent of it. There was also James J. Fox, the great British cigar merchant, but it remained regional and didn’t have the jet-set élan of the others.
The rest of the cigar world comprised independent local shops, even in global capitals: the aforementioned Fox, or Boutique 22 in Paris. Throughout the back half of the twentieth century, in North American malls you had Tinder Box stores—at one point 200 of them. Today only a few remain; one notable long-running outpost is in Palm Springs, California.
This all predated the global proliferation of Los Casas del Habanos. Max Gutmann, owner of the exclusive Habanos S.A. distributor for Mexico, created the Casa concept and had already opened the first one in Cancún, Mexico, just in time for the high season in November 1990. Today they’re an international 800-pound gorilla (their absence in the U.S. notwithstanding), with 160 Casas in 120 cities in more than 60 countries, but back then they were a nonfactor.
How much has the world changed in just 30 years? Nat Sherman shuttered its doors during its ninetieth-anniversary year, 2020, an annus horribilis if ever there was one. Dunhill (sans Alfred) hasn’t sold its bespoke “My Mixture” pipe-tobacco blends, which gained it global fame, or Cuban, Canary Island, Honduran or Dominican cigars in its boutiques (with the singular exception of its London flagship Bourdon House) since the early 2000s, and the Dunhill cigar brand ceased altogether in 2018. Gérard and the Cohiba Cigar Divan remain but have lost significant global luster, though they do still enjoy a devoted clientele. Thomas Hinds, the noted Toronto tobacconist that was the Nat Sherman of the Great White North, has closed as well, as have all too many others. Only Davidoff remains. (On the bright side, James J. Fox has blossomed a bit, adding locations in Harrods and Selfridges, both of which provide far more international panache than the stand-alone St. James’s flagship. But the overall worldwide cigar landscape has been forever altered.)
Yet don’t be dismayed—you can still get glimpses of tobacconists who evoke the sensibility of yesteryear, as well as slick new cigar merchants catering to an entirely new clientele. Here are my favorites, as well as suggestions from others which will be added as we find them. (Leave yours in the comments!
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