| Some businesses are more romantic than | | | | matters further) may have been named Hupmann. |
| others. For example, compare winemaking with | | | | 1845: Debut of Partagas and La Corona cigars, |
| toothpick-making. Now, the wine business is, | | | | both in Havana. 1850s: Tobacco's popularity |
| on a day-by-day basis, anything but one | | | | scales new heights when, during the Crimean |
| ecstatic Cabernet Sauvignon after another. | | | | War (1853-1856), Turkish tobacco - the lusty, |
| You have to handle distribution, advertising, | | | | semi-sweet, full-flavored tobacco that makes |
| labor, storage - one prosaic detail after | | | | Middle Eastern travel such a joy for the |
| another. And the toothpick isn't nearly as | | | | nonallergic - achieves general availability |
| boring as it looks - science journalist Henry | | | | in Europe for the first time. Smoking rooms, |
| Petroski has devoted, in fact, an entire book | | | | smoking jackets, even smoking caps and |
| to it, The Toothpick, which, critics say, | | | | slippers become part of every Victorian |
| makes unexpectedly fascinating reading. The | | | | gentleman's home, and fashion plate Prince |
| toothpick even has its own little place in | | | | Edward, despite his mother Queen Victoria's |
| literary history - it's the business by which | | | | well-known hatred of smoking, promotes |
| Chad Newsome, hero of Henry James's great | | | | smoking by his own well-remarked example. In |
| novel The Ambassadors, is said to have earned | | | | 1855, the decade's halfway point, Cuba |
| his living. Still - would you rather get | | | | exports 356.6 million cigars - a record yet |
| seated at a party next to a wine guy, or a | | | | to be equaled. 1861: Birth of Swisher Cigars |
| toothpick guy? Most of us would feel the same | | | | when Ohio businessman Daniel Swisher, |
| way about the cigar business - that it's | | | | collecting a debt, is paid in the form of a |
| somehow more exciting than most other | | | | small cigar business. 1861-1865: United |
| industries, including that of the workaday, | | | | States Civil War leads to further popularity |
| assembly-line-made cigarette. In this case, | | | | of cigar smoking, as young men away from home |
| perhaps history bears out our intuitions. | | | | (and under great stress) take up the habit. |
| Take a look at some of the great moments in | | | | 1865: To many contemporary Americans, the |
| the history of cigars, all taken from one | | | | word "lector" makes us think of Hannibal. But |
| tumultuous century - the nineteenth. 1810: | | | | for cigar workers in Spanish-speaking |
| The branding of cigars begins in - where | | | | countries, it has altogether more pleasant |
| else? - Cuba, where the first two | | | | associations, because in this year, the |
| applications to register a cigar brand are | | | | practice of hiring people to read to cigar |
| recorded: B. Rencurrel and Hija de Cabanas y | | | | rollers ("readers," or, in Spanish, |
| Carbajal. Also, cigar workshops appear for | | | | "lectors") is inaugurated in Cuba (where |
| the first time in the newly-minted United | | | | else?), at the El Figaro factory. This |
| States. 1817: Spain ends its monopoly over | | | | practice is so popular that, in 1868 and |
| the tobacco grown in its former colony, Cuba, | | | | again in 1895, it is banned by the Cuban |
| when King Ferdinand VII signs a bill allowing | | | | government for a period (ten years the first |
| for private growing and selling of tobacco, | | | | time, three the second). Apparently those |
| as well as cigar production and sales. | | | | cigar workers were getting too knowledgeable |
| 1800s-1820s: Cigar manufacture spreads north | | | | for (their rulers') comfort. Maybe we could |
| from Spain to France, Germany, and (later) | | | | bring this custom to other industries? 1873: |
| England. 1836: Cuba's cigar export market | | | | Romeo y Julieta cigars introduced by |
| reaches 4.887 million units and 306 | | | | Inocencio Alvarez and Mannin Garcia. 1886: |
| factories, thanks in part to the lifting of | | | | Ybor City neighborhood in Tampa, Florida, a |
| the Spanish monopoly nineteen years earlier. | | | | regional center of cigar production, is |
| 1837: Remember cigar boxes - those nostalgic, | | | | founded by Vincent Ybor. 1898: Rudyard |
| brightly-illustrated items that signify the | | | | Kipling writes the line "A woman is a just a |
| higher standards of an earlier era in the | | | | women, but a good cigar is a smoke," linking |
| history of product packaging? Well, that | | | | misogyny and cigar-smoking in the minds of |
| tradition begins in this year, when Ramon | | | | thousands of Edwardian gentlemen. Generations |
| Allones creates his same-named cigar. His | | | | of female smokers and, later, female cigar |
| company is the first to use intricate | | | | execs will beg to differ. |
| lithography to set boxes of his cigars apart | | | | |
| from other brands. 1840: Tobacco grows in | | | | CigarFox provides the finest cigars that |
| popularity, and cigar export from Cuba alone | | | | include cigar brands like Cohiba, |
| surpasses 141.6 million. 1844: H. Upmann, one | | | | Montecristo, Gurkha, Macanudo, Rocky Patel, |
| of the most famous of all cigar brands, is | | | | Romeo, Drew Estate, and many more. Other |
| introduced in Cuba. How's that spelled? No | | | | cigar products include cigar humidors, cigar |
| one is really sure - the brand may have been | | | | boxes, and cigar accessories like Zippo |
| inaugurated by Hermann Upmann, a German | | | | Lighters. |
| banker, or by his family, who (to confuse | | | | |