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