To judge by CA’s initial letters-to-the-editor column, “Out of the Humidor,” the nation’s estimated 400,000 aficionados of expensive cigars are ripe for rebellion. Shunted throughout these health-conscious decades to segregated restaurant tables and shown the door at home, they’re a frustrated breed who relish nothing more than the ritual lip, clip, light and savor of hand-rolled premium leaf. Here is author Gay Talese’s sly ruminations on the pedestrian gibes he elicits along Park Avenue as he takes his cigar out for a walk. From London comes a piece by Pierre Salinger recounting how, in 1961, President John F. Kennedy gave him 12 hours to purchase 1,000 Petit Upmann Cuban cigars before ordering an embargo on all imports from Castro’s Cuba. There’s also a unique national guide listing restaurants that are “cigarfriendly.” And, like Shanken’s signature publication, The Wine Spectator (125,000 subscribers), CA experts will regularly rate smokes as determined by “blind tastings.” Unfortunately, this month’s winner, the five-inch Cohiba Robusto (“mouth-filling with rich coffee, spicy flavors and an impressively long finish”), is Cuban and can’t be bought on the open U.S. market.
The last time a magazine devoted to cigars was published -by Haworth Press in 1980-it died after the first issue. But Shanken, who is widely credited with giving definition to the wine-and-spirit business, may well do the same for premium cigars. With an initial run of 140,000 copies, CA will be sold internationally on newsstands as well as by subscription and through 1,000 U.S. cigar stores. Shanken’s demographics tell him that 38 percent of his target audience, nearly all men, are millionaires and nearly half report incomes between $75,000 and $300,000. Reflecting those upscale numbers, CA’s premiere issue boasts an impressive 60-pages of ads for such premium products as a handblown bottle of Glenlivet Scotch at $650, Louis Vuitton luggage and, of course, Cohiba cigars.
Last week in New York, the St. Regis hotel turned off its rooftop smoke detectors while Shanken hosted 175 of his closest friends and potential advertisers at a black-tie dinner. Women were at a premium but there were ashtrays aplenty. For the first time in 156 Broadway performances, Gregory Hines, who enjoys a handrolled cigar almost as much as an intricate dance routine, skipped out on his hit show, “Jelly’s Last Jam,” just to attend Shanken’s elaborate smoker. “These are my two passions in life,” said the pleased publisher, a glass of 1975 Mouton Rothschild in one hand and a 1959 Montecristo Seleccion Suprema No. 1 in the other. Even Freud would understand.
