Fun Facts About Cigars

Cigar smoking is on the rise again

Cigar smoking is on the rise again. If youre a cigar aficionado, cigars are more than an after dinner indulgence. Not only is cigar smoking a lifestyle, but cigars have a colorful history in Europe and the U.S.

Cigar Smoking in Colonial Times

Tobacco is a Native American plant. In 1492 when Columbus moored his ship off the Cuban coast, his scouts, Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de Torres, discovered the inhabitants smoking tobacco using dried cornhusks and plantain leaves as wrappers. Senor de Jerez lit up and became the first European cigar smoker.

Tobacco quickly grew so popular that it became the driving engine behind much of the early colonization of the Americas. At first, Europeans preferred to smoke tobacco in pipes. Pipe smoking has a long European history that predates the introduction of tobacco by a thousand years. In ancient times, the physician Hypocrites prescribed smoking pipes filled with herbal mixtures as a treatment for various female diseases. Angelica root was a popular pipe smoke throughout Scandinavia from the tenth century on.

Cigar smoking spread first to Spain and Portugal and then to France. Although pipe smoking remained the delivery system of choice in Britain until well into the 19th century, by the early 18th century most European smokers had gone native in their tobacco smoking preferences. Tobacco plantations were established in Cuba and all across the British colonies in what was to become Virginia and the Carolinas.

The Cigar Capital of the World

So you think Havana was always the cigar capital of the world? Think again. In the mid-19th century, Vicente Martinez Ybor, manufacturer of the primo cigar brand Principe de Gales (Prince of Wales), moved his operation from Havana to Key West, sparking a mass exodus among other cigar manufacturers.

By 1929, over 500 million Havana-style cigars were being produced in the U.S. every year, many of them in the Florida city of Ybor in what is now West Tampa, earning that city the nickname, Cigar Capital of the World. At the height of its cigar boom, West Tampa had over 70 cigar-manufacturing factories. Many of its cigar-making businesses, however, remained small, family-owned shops where cigars were rolled by hand and sold to smokers without third-party distributors.

Todays cigar renaissance has turned Ybor into a cigar center once again. You can tour many of the remaining restored cigar factories, or enjoy a smoke at one of the many specialty smoke shops where artisans hand roll cigars on the premises, customized for your smoking pleasure. If you cant get to Ybor, think of ordering discount cigars online. For those who still prefer to smoke tobacco in pipes, you can buy bulk pipe tobacco on the Internet as well.

by: Elliot Boudin

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