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New Orleans, August 13, 2010 – One of the pioneers of the super-premium class of handmade cigars, Jean Clement, died Tuesday evening here in New Orleans.
Clement was attending the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association trade show, visited with retailers and distributors and according to friends, retired to his hotel and passed away later in the evening. He was 81 years old.
A long-time seller and distributor of spirits, Clement was also a devoted cigar smoker and created his own brand, Juan Clemente, in 1982. "He was among the vanguard of individuals, especially non-Cubans, to create his own cigar," remembered Marty Pulvers, the then-owner of Sherlock's Haven in San Francisco and a leading cigar retailer in the Bay Area. "He was one of the first to bring out a top-quality cigar from the Dominican Republic, and was really more of an artisan than a cigar seller. He always said that his cigars would be remembered more for their quality than for their price, and he was right."
His cigars caught the eye of connoisseurs and was notably saluted by Paul Garmirian in the first edition of The Gourmet Guide to Cigars, published in 1990.
In order to ensure consistently high quality, he created his own factory, Tabaquisa, in the Santiago area of the Dominican Republic. His brands – Juan Clemente, Juan Clemente Club Selection and Juan Clemente Reserve – continued to sell well in Europe, but got lost in the U.S. during the Cigar Boom of the mid-to-late 1990s. In recent years, he confided that production totals were about 300,000 cigars annually.
A native of France, Clement will be remembered for his gentle nature, which masked a fierce determination to produce quality cigars that met his exacting standards. He succeeded, and he will be missed.
~ Rich Perelman
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