In 1995, the Pewter Rose at 1820 South Boulevard in Charlotte opened Smoke-Easy Cigar Bar in its basement. The Charlotte Observer hailed the establishment as “among the city’s first,” (The Charlotte Observer, 11-17-95) but it would prove to be a pioneer in a popular push into the smoke-and-drink space at the end of the 90s.
In the summer of 1996, Atlantic Beer & Ice Company at 330 N. Tryon Street added a cigar bar to their offerings when they renovated their facility. Then, in the early months of 1997, a new bar in Uptown Charlotte was looking for bartenders and waiters for what they hailed as “Charlotte’s First True Cigar Bar.” The bar was part of Marriott Center City Hotel and was called Cutter’s Cigar Bar. Cutter’s would be the premier smoking and drinking establishment in the city well into the next decade.
All three of these businesses have since shuttered their doors, but not far from their footprints, a new wave of cigar bars and lounges have taken up residency. After Cutter’s shut its doors in 2015, Tailored Smoke Cigar Lounge opened the same year just two blocks away from the Marriot.
Tailored Smoke has since opened a second location, and a couple other players have entered this space in the past four years. Just across the street from the city’s original Smoke-Easy Cigar Bar, The Vintage Whiskey and Cigar Bar opened in Charlotte’s South End in 2020. The next year, Havana Smoke & Reserve Social Club opened a few blocks between the old locations of Cutter’s and Atlantic Beer & Ice.
Charlotte’s new push into the cigar bar space echoes the past, but also encourages a broader clientele to learn how to drink whiskey and smoke cigars together.
For North Carolina, tobacco has long been an economic boon. Some of the state’s oldest roads would have been cut through the countryside by remote farmers “rolling” rotund hogsheads or barrels full of their tobacco crop to market. Today, North Carolina plants the most acreage of tobacco in the US, and in 2021, it accounted for 47.7% of all tobacco sales within the country. The next highest state, Kentucky, accounted for 27.1% of the American market.
Economically, tobacco is consequential to North Carolina, but the tobacco that the state grows is not suitable for cigar production, only cigarettes and pipes. Relative to the majority of states, North Carolina is tax friendly to tobacco products, like cigarettes and cigars, but it still ranks below other more hands-off states.
Tar Heels do not smoke at an extremely high rate when compared to some other states, even other tobacco producing states like Kentucky. In terms of legal attitudes towards smoking, North Carolina has more strict smoking laws than many. Since 2010, the state has prohibited smoking indoors at restaurants and bars. There are other states that have not yet fully illegalized indoor smoking. But, North Carolina left space in their Smoke-free Restaurant, Bars and Lodging Law, providing two loopholes: private clubs and cigar bars.
Private clubs are defined as nonprofits that are exclusively run by and open to members. The club may allow indoor smoking, but so can cigar bars. Cigar bars, according to the law, must “generate 60% or more of its quarterly gross revenue from the sale of alcoholic beverages and 25% or more from the sale of cigars.” The establishments must be in stand alone buildings equipped with humidors. No one under 21 is allowed to enter and smoke cannot go into an enclosed area from the bar such as a restaurant.
Because these cigar bars operate contingent upon alcohol sales, they are also subject to the rules of the ABC Commission of North Carolina. Luckily, the state allows for liquor to be served without food present. Most states only provide liquor licenses where there is food service. In North Carolina, where there is no food, there can be smoking. This legal background allows for the residents of Charlotte to enjoy a cigar with a glass of whiskey at a number of local establishments. Since the passage of this law, Charlotte has seen a steady interest in smoking establishments–the cigar bar, in particular, has flourished.
Charlotte’s first wave of cigar bars from the 1990s came and went in an era where indoor smoking laws were not on the books. The new wave is settling into the new legal niche that allows them to pair two classic luxury commodities together: whiskey and cigars. But why is the Queen City seeing this flourish in cigar bars again today?
At The Vintage Whiskey and Cigar Bar, Marketing Manager Darci Frank, reflects, “We are seeing a new resurgence in cigar smoking in North Carolina. There have always been some retailers, but in the last four years you have seen a huge growth in places that offer a lounge or bar atmosphere.” Now, cigar bars are opening around Charlotte and in nearby Concord.
Tailored Smoke Cigar Lounge was the first cigar bar to open in the new wave and it has since opened a second location in Concord. The cigartender at the Uptown location speaks on the recent growth in the space, “There are a lot of hookah lounges as well, but as far as the cigar experience goes, people are more intrigued. A lot of people have never had cigars and want to try it out. This has started really in the last six years or so.”
No one is arguing that whiskey and cigars are not compatible. They come together in a swirling vibe of mahogany desk and leather armchair. Both offer sensory experiences influenced by specific denominations of origin, traditional production techniques, and the gradual refinement of the palate. The new demand for this pairing in Charlotte requires a cohort of educators who can effortlessly open bottles, humidify boxes, pour drams, and light cigars.
In the South End, Vintage is an oasis of expertise on all things cigar and spirits. Beverage Manager Larisa Yanicak and Humidor Manager McKenzie Delaney aim to bring a refined and enjoyable pairing of cigars and drinks without the intimidation that can come along with the complicated jargon associated with both products.
“If you’re trying to get into cigars and whiskey, it can be intimidating, but that’s why we are here,” Yanicak says, “If you have the correct people in place to guide you in the right direction, there is no need for prior experience.”
Delaney adds, “We try to treat everyone kindly when they’re first trying stuff out. If someone tells me they are a new smoker, I’m excited, it means they really want to learn.”
For starters, there is a reason cigars and whiskey pair well together. Yanicak explains, “A lot of the notes that you get out of cigars–cinnamon, cocoa, sometimes oak depending on the tobacco–can pair well with the notes coming out of bourbon and whiskey–smokiness from peaty scotches, earthiness from Irish whiskey, vanilla in bourbon.”
Over in Uptown, at Tailored Smoke Cigar Lounge, inclusivity and pairings are key. The cigartender explains, “A lot of people think that cigars are for people in suits behind closed doors. But no–cigars are for everybody. We serve everybody.”
Once again, the story is one of a hospitable introduction to a whiskey and cigar pairing. “We try to help people pair a nice drink with their cigar. A lot of bourbons and whiskeys go well with cigars, and then it gets down to the real nitty-gritty,” he explains. “The tobacconist can speak to the cigar side, and you have your sommelier or bourbon steward who can speak to the drink side. We try to mix those two worlds to get nice pairings.” In a way, the inaccessible nature of the jargon and palate of both whiskey and cigars opens the door for an elevated hospitality experience.
On the education side, too, Anthony Riccardi has started The Bourbon Whiskey Library, a Charlotte tasting experience where whiskey and cigar curious consumers can come, choose what they want to taste, and learn about the products from Riccardi, a Certified Executive Bourbon Steward.
Riccardi acknowledges the difficulties in promoting interest in the pairing. “It is a bit of a challenge. If they are big into cigars, but want to know whiskey, it makes it more difficult. You need to dissect the person and their palate.”
He notes that many people have bad experiences with either whiskey or cigars and can develop taste aversions or just be less willing to try them again.
For Riccardi, the growth in cigar bars is “a step in the right direction.” He believes that the best path is to start with light cigars and move to maduros, start with mellow bourbons and move to peaty Scotches. It’s about catering to the beginner to develop a flourishing scene of aficionados.
While the cigar bar market is slowly expanding in Charlotte, it is arriving on the heels of a craft beverage boom. Craft breweries have become default drinking establishments fanning out along the length of Charlotte’s light rail Lynx Blue Line.
Vintage’s Marketing Manager, Darci Frank, comments, “Charlotte has had a big craft cocktail and craft beer boom in the last 10 years. The fact that we could bring cigars into that, as people are interested in trying new things, is how the business came about.” But there is an intriguing give-and-take to the cigar space. Craft beverages are local, cigars are not.
Yanicak can speak to the new bourbons and whiskeys that are coming out of smaller distilleries and local distilleries. For North Carolina, she lists Southern Grace Distilleries in Mount Pleasant, Great Wagon Road in Charlotte, and Southern Distilling Company in Salisbury. The liquor menu at Vintage is dotted with little asterisks across each category, denoting locally made offerings.
Delaney counters with a perspective from the humidor, “You can’t produce cigars locally because the countries of origin from which we acquire our tobacco are always Meso and South American. The context of getting a local or American cigar, doesn’t have the same draw as it would for a distillery or brewer. You’re smoking something because it’s exotic.”
Where it seems that consumers are now pursuing more nuanced and localized beverage options, the cigar and whiskey angle is one in which two different trends unite. Sure, these cigar bars serve Scotch whiskey, Kentucky bourbons, and some mezcals, but the expansion of the beverage palate demands a more sophisticated cocktail offering.
Nicaragua, Honduras, Dominican Republic–a bar could source exquisite aged rums from each of these countries to focus on the sources of their cigar tobacco. But this is not the impulse. There is something about introducing the foreign element to the established craft cocktail scene that sits well with consumers.
Meanwhile, Riccardi of The Bourbon Whiskey Library, feels ambivalent about the fact that North Carolina tobacco isn’t in cigars. “At the end, North Carolina is the tobacco state. Tobacco is tobacco, what you use it for is up to the user.” The association itself may be strong enough to develop the cigar angle with local emotion.
Riccardi’s focus over the past several years has been on connecting mom-and-pop whiskey producers to enthusiasts through a volunteer-only community called the Bourbon Thieves. North Carolina brands like Southern Distilling Company are part of this mission. For him, the combination is a way of “showing the rest of the country what we have.” North Carolina has whiskey and tobacco–even if you aren’t always encountering them at cigar bars.
At Vintage, Delaney delves into the history of cigars, “Some of the earliest cigars came from the Olmec culture and moved to the Mayans, but these were four foot long cigars on a pole because it was for communal purposes. Tobacco was used for many purposes. Some were ceremonial, some were shamanistic.”
Perhaps the underlying push for cigar bars is an interest in a new community space. “Charlotte is a very transient city. People come in for work. People move here,” explains Yanicak, “We have a lot of people from out of town who smoke cigars back at home and they want to check out what we are doing here.” There is interest in the space from a diverse group of people looking to feel anchored.
The sense at Tailored Smoke: “You feel like a boss. You feel nice. The vibe is good. You can socialize.”
The cocktail bar is a communal space. The craft brewery or the beer garden help people to come together. But as consumers enter the realm of whiskey and cigars where they need to trust the hospitality of the establishment they are in for guidance and instruction, they are becoming more susceptible to the voices of others.
In a way, indoor smoking affects everyone. That’s the reason that so many states have regulated it. But with the addition of something as ancient as tobacco, the experience of sitting down, having a drink, and lighting a cigar can be new and welcome. For Charlotte, a legal loophole has become an opportunity to bring a new experience to the consumer–one which these establishments are incredibly passionate about.
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