the United States – the largest cigar market in the world – rose fi ve-fold in four years as smoking cigars became fashionable with a younger, moneyed set. Seeing the demand, in 1999 Christie’s in London started holding exclusive cigar auctions twice a year. Many records were broken at these sales, including the sale in October 2000 of three Partagas Lusitania cigars made before the Cuban revolution. Th ey went for £3,000, and were the most expensive cigars in the world at the time. Th ough the Christie’s auctions stopped around four years ago, many others have since fi lled the vacuum. One organiser is Mitchell Orchant who, as well as hosting vintage cigar auctions, also owns C.Gars (www.cgarsltd.co.uk). He says that cigar sales are still high, even in the current tough economic climate. ‘Sales have been growing annually, as have prices for good-quality vintage cigars, particularly with clients from China, Hong Kong and Japan,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure quite how to quantify the market as a whole, but we sell around £2m-worth of vintage cigars a year.’ Th e most prized collectors’ items have always been Cuban cigars. Th e island’s temperate climate, the skill of its cigar makers and the low acidity of its soil make Cubans stand out against cigars from anywhere else in the world. And of course, the 1960 American embargo adds an element of mystique and exclusivity. Before Castro’s revolution in 1959 there were more than 1,000 diff erent brands and sizes of Havana cigars. When the industry was nationalised, many factory owners fl ed and many of the country’s fi nest cigar brands ceased to exist. Today there are only 27 handmade types of Cuban cigars. Other paraphernalia, such as humidors, that are either rare or have historical associations are also highly desirable for cigar devotees. In 1998 a nine-carat gold cigar case given to Sir Winston Churchill by Aristotle Onassis as a birthday present in 1960 – estimated at £15,000 – was sold to a private collector for £43,300 at Sotheby’s. Th e inscription read: ‘Happy Birthday from Ari.’ And a mundane typed letter inviting an MP for lunch sold for £3,000 because it was framed with one of Churchill’s cigars. In an earlier PRIVATCOLLECTOR sale, a battered single-cigar case used by Churchill when he was a soldier on the Western Front in World War I fetched £4,830. Fidel Castro’s signature on cigar boxes and humidors also attracts high prices, and if ever a cigar or smoking artefact linked to Che Guevara came on the market, you can bet it would snapped up for a ridiculous price. ‘People buy rare cigars for several reasons,’ says Mitchell Orchant. ‘Many connoisseurs will typically buy one box to smoke and one box to stash away to age and sell at a later date. Usually they end up having smoked the fi rst box for free with the proceeds of the second box.’ Others buy them as curiosities to be kept, maybe sold again, but never smoked. Many cigars, maybe the majority, will improve with a few years’ ageing, but unless they’re maintained in suitably humidifi ed conditions, they can only deteriorate – losing their bouquet and drying out. Th e best bets are fuller-bodied and fatter cigars, such as the stubby robusto size. As with fi ne wine, even very old cigars can sometimes be surprisingly good to smoke. ‘It’s all down to the way they’ve been kept,’ ‘Connoisseurs will buy one box to smoke, one to sell at a later date. Th ey usually end up smoking the first box for free with the proceeds of the second’ Twenty-Four says Orchant. ‘I’ve just received some from the 1930s which are very good.’ Of course, very wealthy cigar lovers can aff ord to buy rare cigars to smoke, not keep. One such fan is Sir Terence Conran: ‘I bought two or three hundred Monte Cristos at an auction in Havana a couple of years ago, and now there are only around 50 left,’ he says. Whether a collector chooses to smoke or save his handmade bounty, there’s a topic that causes plenty of debate between cigar connoisseurs: what will happen when the American embargo on Cuba is fi nally lifted? Whenever this might be (possibly in the next few years), there will be a huge new demand for Havana cigars from the United States. Of course, one can only speculate, but the consensus is that annual sales in America could well exceed 40 million. Cuba currently exports around 150 million cigars each year. For some, this is a cloud on the horizon – the worry is that the increase in demand could aff ect quality – but for those canny investors with large, well-kept collections, it is almost certainly a cause for celebration, as they will see their carefully stored-away cigars start to rocket in value.
THOMAS MANN, SIGMUND FREUD, WINSTON CHURCHILL … and many other great personalities, despite all their dissimilarities had one passion in common: They all knew how to appreciate a good cigar. Nothing but the best was good enough for them. And the best calls for plenty of time, love and care. Only in this manner a cigar can mature like a good wine to become the top in its class. We design humidors that live up to these high standards. FIRST CLASS HUMIDORS BY GERBER SPS-CONTROL WITH iHUMIDOR-APP: control your humidor from all over the world by a web-interface – www.gerber-humidor.de
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