When were the first recorded independent print cigar review?

[El Presidente]

When was the first recorded print independent cigar review?

I was asked this question yesterday and had no idea. Let's see who can dig up the earliest recorded independent cigar reviews....google away .

Let us know what you find here.

A couple of aged cigars to those who find and post the two oldest recorded independent reviews* 

 

*They have to be independent reviews.....not advertising

[Ken Gargett]

no idea on this but a mate of mine was brought out to oz from the UK (this was before i knew him) to run the cigar store (i think dunhills in the intercon in sydney). he started writing reviews much like wine reviews. somewhere along the line he met shanken. he swears blind it was him who gave the idea to shanken for cigar aficionado. no idea if true. not known for porkies but he has been known to treat the truth as somewhat elastic. 

[Habana Mike]

May be able to find early reviews logged on the internet though, as Al Gore only invented it a mere 3 decades or so past, one would have to delve into the microfiche of London journals and newspapers from at least the late 1800s I would think.

[Puros Y Vino]

There was/is a Usenet group from the early days of the Internet.  There was probably some reviews there.  And IIRC, this newsgroup is where term "herf" was born.   As for printed reviews my bet is on something out of the UK or Spain.  

[Cigar Surgeon]

I can't nail down reviews but for print publications as I understand it the first print article on cigars was February, 1984 in "The Wine Spectator" in a column entitled “I Love a Good Smoke.”

[lovethehaze]

Mayan hieroglyphics.....

https://scubarob.love/2019/02/24/rituals-from-ancient-societies-the-cigar/

Seems plausible if they documented it in their art,way of speaking and form of communication that this could be some of the first reviews.. author unknown but definitely was Mayan and how to translate this review is definitely up for debate. I would say it was independent as well.

Whether this is what you were searching for I doubt but interesting none the less.

 

 

 

 

 

[Çnote]

Years ago, I did a similar search for the 1st non-commercial published wine reviews, and ended up with Decanter, as everything before that was published by members of the British wine trade, notably Henry Waugh and Michael Broadbent, primarily in reporting the drinkablity of wines up for auctions and very generalized vintage reports for the first 50 odd years of the 20th century, with an honorable mention to Robert Parker, for being truly independent in 1978.

Researching cigar reviews over the course of the week, the oldest review site online I can find is here http://www.cigars-review.org/, but that's only 2003. Cigar Aficionado was started in 1992, and as stated above cigars were periodically mentioned in the Wine Spectator from 1984 onwards, but I don't see anything that would be read as a cigar review per se in WS. CA has had reviews as a staple since its 1st issue. I can't find anything on Usenet or Reddit pre 2003 that is a 'review,' but I wasn't incredibly thorough, it's a jungle with very little redemption IMHO. I would say the cigar equivalent of Robert Parker today is Katman, but his early reviews in my understanding (and his own admittance I remember reading) were essentially advertising.

I personally find reviews very interesting as I feel that sharing a bottle of wine/liquor is quite easy (and almost a prerequisite for enjoyment), while virtually no-one shares a cigar its entirety, perhaps a puff or two; an above average cigar will have some transition from start to finish, so must be appreciated almost entirely in retrospect, while only the finest of -immature- wines will show transitions during prolonged consumption, ie slowing drinking over hours/days.

Based on my own experiences of appreciation of cigars v alcohol v food (consumables), a particular cigar is rarely the central point of the event or conversation, even when it's a box open on the table for all to partake at a cigar oriented gathering. The potluck of food or drink is something that is more tangibly shared with intrinsic predetermined preferences agreed upon jointly; a bite of steak is considered to be a representation of the entirety of the steak while very few would judge a cigar, much less a box, by a puff. I've rarely seen food or drink go to absolute waste at any event, but every herf or even brief visit to a lounge and I've seen a barely smoked cigar tossed for a variety of reasons, usually summed up as 'not worth the effort.'

Circling back, I think it's the isolationist tendency of cigar smoking coupled with the same tendency of the internet which allows cigar reviews in their current state to blossom and be shared. We as modern consumers don't need/want as much merchant handholding as previous generations, but do appreciate peer reviews in making buying decisions, especially as per unit costs increase over time for luxury goods, thus we as consumers need more information in order to 'make the right purchase,' and end up cultivating an entirely new product of 'reviews' that are then created for our enjoyment and engagement.

Thank you @El Presidente for focusing my time on this as I wait for my on hand stock to age.

 

[MD Puffer]

On 11/11/2019 at 11:15 PM, El Presidente said:

When was the first recorded print independent cigar review?

Is wasn’t here at FOH?

[benfica_77]

Sometimes I scare myself how deep I can get into searching something in the web.... I found a review dated August 20th 1912 from the newspaper called the vulcan review. About a horse branded cigar called "caballos". I've attached a copy of the newspaper. The article is found on page 2 on the bottom left region. Clearly if you want to find dirt on someone call me and i'll find it lol. ?

VR_19120820.pdf

[benfica_77]

Here's a bit of a cigar timeline from 1492 to 1992 courtesy of the new york times....

 

• 1492 Columbus becomes the first European to visit Cuba and is startled to find the natives smoking large tube-shaped constructions of plant leaves filled with tobacco. Columbus returns to Spain with cigars for everyone.
• 1762 Israel Putnam returns to his Connecticut home from Cuba, where he had been an officer in the British Army. Putnam brings back a cache of Havana cigars, starting an American tradition.
• 1919 Thomas R. Marshall, Woodrow Wilson's Vice President, declares,''What this country really needs is a good 5-cent cigar.'' The subsequent rise of machine-made, mass-produced cigars fulfills half of Marshall's wish.

• 1939 Sigmund Freud dies of cancer of the soft palate and jaw, brought on by his 15-to-20-cigars-a-day habit. Sometimes, a cigar is just asking for trouble.
• February 1962 A black moment for premium-cigar lovers: the Kennedy Administration imposes a trade embargo on Cuba, home of what many believe to be the world's finest cigars. Just before signing the embargo, J.F.K. dispatches his press secretary, Pierre Salinger, for an 11th-hour purchase of 1,200 of Cuba's finest Petit Upmanns.

• 1964 The Surgeon General issues his landmark report on health and smoking, and Americans consume about 9.9 billion cigars.
• 1973 The high-water mark of cigar consumption in America, with 11.2 billion smoked, an average of 54 cigars for every person in the country.
• September 1975 Pink Floyd releases the song ''Have a Cigar.'' The promotion of cigar smoking by one of the most popular rock groups of the day has no measurable effect on the youth of America; cigar consumption declines for the second year in a row.

• Fall 1981 Al Goldstein, publisher of Screw magazine, starts up another publication devoted to gentlemanly pursuits, a modest 12-page quarterly entitled Cigar. Cigar smoking is not just a part of life, it is everything, announces Goldstein in a lead editorial. Close, but no cigar -- Goldstein loses $200,000 on the venture, which folds after four issues.
• 1983 Boston's Ritz-Carlton hotel resurrects an old custom by holding a black-tie cigar dinner, the brainchild of Henry Schielein, the hotel's cigar-loving general manager. By 1994, more than 2,000 such evenings are being held in hotels, restaurants, bars and clubs across the country.
• 1990 The first rumblings of an approaching cigar explosion: sales of premium cigars -- hand-rolled numbers priced at more than $2.50 -- nearly triple from their 1987 level. Premium cigars emerge as the perfect power accessory for a decade in transition, a 1980's statement of success at a scaled-down 1990's price.
• September 1992 The first issue of Cigar Aficionado magazine hits the newsstands. The publisher Marvin Shanken's glossy quarterly (now a bimonthly) proceeds to both chronicle the emerging cigar craze and shamelessly stoke its popularity, with covers featuring celebrity stogie smokers like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jack Nicholson, Rush Limbaugh and Demi Moore and articles offering fetishistic coverage of cigars and cigar accessories. Circulation climbs from an initial press run of 100,000 copies (most of them given away) to about 400,000 paid subscriptions today.

[Ken Gargett]

4 hours ago, Çnote said:

Years ago, I did a similar search for the 1st non-commercial published wine reviews, and ended up with Decanter, as everything before that was published by members of the British wine trade, notably Henry Waugh and Michael Broadbent, primarily in reporting the drinkablity of wines up for auctions and very generalized vintage reports for the first 50 odd years of the 20th century, with an honorable mention to Robert Parker, for being truly independent in 1978.

Researching cigar reviews over the course of the week, the oldest review site online I can find is here http://www.cigars-review.org/, but that's only 2003. Cigar Aficionado was started in 1992, and as stated above cigars were periodically mentioned in the Wine Spectator from 1984 onwards, but I don't see anything that would be read as a cigar review per se in WS. CA has had reviews as a staple since its 1st issue. I can't find anything on Usenet or Reddit pre 2003 that is a 'review,' but I wasn't incredibly thorough, it's a jungle with very little redemption IMHO. I would say the cigar equivalent of Robert Parker today is Katman, but his early reviews in my understanding (and his own admittance I remember reading) were essentially advertising.

I personally find reviews very interesting as I feel that sharing a bottle of wine/liquor is quite easy (and almost a prerequisite for enjoyment), while virtually no-one shares a cigar its entirety, perhaps a puff or two; an above average cigar will have some transition from start to finish, so must be appreciated almost entirely in retrospect, while only the finest of -immature- wines will show transitions during prolonged consumption, ie slowing drinking over hours/days.

Based on my own experiences of appreciation of cigars v alcohol v food (consumables), a particular cigar is rarely the central point of the event or conversation, even when it's a box open on the table for all to partake at a cigar oriented gathering. The potluck of food or drink is something that is more tangibly shared with intrinsic predetermined preferences agreed upon jointly; a bite of steak is considered to be a representation of the entirety of the steak while very few would judge a cigar, much less a box, by a puff. I've rarely seen food or drink go to absolute waste at any event, but every herf or even brief visit to a lounge and I've seen a barely smoked cigar tossed for a variety of reasons, usually summed up as 'not worth the effort.'

Circling back, I think it's the isolationist tendency of cigar smoking coupled with the same tendency of the internet which allows cigar reviews in their current state to blossom and be shared. We as modern consumers don't need/want as much merchant handholding as previous generations, but do appreciate peer reviews in making buying decisions, especially as per unit costs increase over time for luxury goods, thus we as consumers need more information in order to 'make the right purchase,' and end up cultivating an entirely new product of 'reviews' that are then created for our enjoyment and engagement.

Thank you @El Presidente for focusing my time on this as I wait for my on hand stock to age.

 

i think you are spot on re decanter. pretty sure it was the first serious and fully devoted wine mag (there was a UK 'wines and spirits' mag at the time). it was a bit earlier than 78 - 1975, i think.

the founder was actually an aussie working in the UK. tony lord. known for being somewhat forthright and uncompromising in his views. also known for being able to knock off more wine in a sitting than most people could drink in a year. ended up in southwest west aussie where he eventually passed away. i think he and parnish or parnell, his co-founder, had both been at the wine and spirits mag.

but their mag was based on the success at the time of wine columns in the papers. you'll find they go way back past the mid 70s and these mags. 

even here, len evans was writing columns - as well as for mags like decanter - back in the 60s and then 70s. i took over from david bray at the courier mail some time in the 90s from memory. at that stage, he had been doing the column for more than thirty years (someone, might have been evans, told me that david's was the longest continuous wine column in the world at the time - no idea if true). 

i suppose technically the first wine review goes back to the famous diary of samuel pepys.

perhaps the most famous entry of all was the first mention of haut brion, one of the great first growths (not yet declared so) of Bordeaux. this was April 1663. "Off the Exchange with Sir J. Cutler and Mr. Grant to the Royall Oak Tavern, in Lumbard Street, where Alexander Broome the poet was, a merry and witty man, I believe, if he be not a little conceited, and here drank a sort of French wine, called Ho Bryan, that hath a good and most particular taste that I never met with.”

i know of no earlier wine review but 1663 is not bad. 

cigars, can't help. 

[benfica_77]

On 11/16/2019 at 12:36 AM, Ken Gargett said:

perhaps the most famous entry of all was the first mention of haut brion, one of the great first growths (not yet declared so) of Bordeaux. this was April 1663. "Off the Exchange with Sir J. Cutler and Mr. Grant to the Royall Oak Tavern, in Lumbard Street, where Alexander Broome the poet was, a merry and witty man, I believe, if he be not a little conceited, and here drank a sort of French wine, called Ho Bryan, that hath a good and most particular taste that I never met with

Learning something new. Thanks Ken

[rcarlson]

On 11/15/2019 at 9:20 PM, benfica_77 said:

Sometimes I scare myself how deep I can get into searching something in the web.... I found a review dated August 20th 1912 from the newspaper called the vulcan review. About a horse branded cigar called "caballos". I've attached a copy of the newspaper. The article is found on page 2 on the bottom left region. Clearly if you want to find dirt on someone call me and i'll find it lol. ?

VR_19120820.pdf 7.24 MB · 0 download

If I knew how to photoshop, this would've had "And Epstein didn't kill himself" at the end.  

[Coloniales]

On 11/12/2019 at 5:35 PM, bundwallah said:

There was/is a Usenet group from the early days of the Internet.  There was probably some reviews there.  And IIRC, this newsgroup is where term "herf" was born.   As for printed reviews my bet is on something out of the UK or Spain.  

Yes that was newsgroup Alt.smokers.cigars I was there back in the day, was the wild west of the internet. Occasional flame wars, which were hilarious. The term "Herf" was coined around 1996. See link below.

 

Steve Saka had www.cigarnexus.com very early on, seems to be down now.The Cuban Cigar codes once cracked were first published on there.

https://cigarcraig.wordpress.com/2009/09/29/the-origin-of-the-word-herf/

 

Keith.

[benfica_77]

On 11/18/2019 at 6:33 AM, Coloniales said:

Yes that was newsgroup Alt.smokers.cigars I was there back in the day, was the wild west of the internet. Occasional flame wars, which were hilarious. The term "Herf" was coined around 1996. See link below.

 

Steve Saka had www.cigarnexus.com very early on, seems to be down now.The Cuban Cigar codes once cracked were first published on there.

https://cigarcraig.wordpress.com/2009/09/29/the-origin-of-the-word-herf/

 

Keith.

Crazy how Herf is now part of the lexicon of most cigar smokers and it all started on an internet thread. I wonder where other terms were originated like Divan. 

[Çnote]

On 11/19/2019 at 4:00 PM, benfica_77 said:

Crazy how Herf is now part of the lexicon of most cigar smokers and it all started on an internet thread. I wonder where other terms were originated like Divan. 

Looks like that use of divan comes from the mid 1800's 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divan_(furniture)

[The Squiggler]

As mentioned above: in 1981, over a decade before Cigar Aficionado, Al Goldstein started the first publication devoted to cigars entitled “Cigar".

Also mentioned above in another comment:  Preceding Cigar Aficionado, the first cigar column in Wine Spectator, which was published in February, 1984, was entitled “I Love a Good Smoke.”  (Is it a 'review'?  It reads more like a general testimonial about cigar smoking)

surely there are reviews that precede these publications, but they seem to be quite elusive...

[El Presidente]

I will let Steve tease this one out 

[Çnote]

On 11/20/2019 at 9:09 PM, El Presidente said:

I will let Steve tease this one out 

????

[lovethehaze]

Bump