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Page 1 of 2  Plus: Our Register & Win winner of the week!Los Angeles, February 14 – Cigar making in the U.S. is at a low ebb, but it isn’t dead by any means. A look at two of the remaining stalwarts in the Northeast, F.X. Smith’s Sons and F.D. Grave & Son, is one of the highlights of the new Spring issue of Cigar Magazine. Like so many cigar companies in the U.S., these were big businesses a century or so ago. F.X. Smith’s had well-known brands such as Lord Baltimore, Socrates and True Grit, although author Frank Seltzer notes that like “most manufacturers during this period, the cigars were essentially the same blend bearing different names.” In the early years of the 20th Century, the company had seven factories and seven hundred workers making hand-rolled cigars in and around McSherrystown, Pennsylvania. But the Depression led to the introduction of machines to make cigars and that turned out to be an advantage when World War II came along in 1941. The factory was contracted to make cigars for the military and their machine-made cigars met the required specifications perfectly, so they were busy. The master cases of cigars had to be sealed with rubber so that they “could be dropped over the sides of boats to float undamaged to the waiting troops.” But as cigars faded into the background and cigarettes took over, the Smiths decided to maintain their emphasis on making all-natural cigars and skip the use of homogenized wrapper, binder or fillers. That turned out to be a good move since F.D. Grave & Sons, another venerable cigar-making firm founded in 1884, needed to find a new manufacturer for its all-natural line of cigars. Today, F.X. Smith’s Sons are the makers of the popular Muniemaker, Judges Cave and Cueto lines that use Connecticut Broadleaf wrappers and all-tobacco short fillers and are priced at $1-$1.50 each (before tobacco taxes, of course). Fifth-generation cigar maker Craig Smith said that his factory, with a staff of 28, makes about four million cigars a year, including the Grave lines and new manufacturing accounts such as John Hay and Hula Girl cigars. Smith also said that he’s brought back – in a small way – some of his family’s famous brands such as Lord Baltimore, Betsy Ross (well known back in its day) and even created a new blend called Tuscarora, named after the New York town where the family had a hunting lodge. F.X. Smith’s Sons and F.D. Grave are part of a small fraternity in the U.S. that focuses on what is called “a luxury cigar at a moderate price,” using all-tobacco blends and natural leaf wrappers. They join Topper Cigar Co. of Meridian, Connecticut, National Cigar of Frankfort, Indiana and the Finck Cigar Co. of San Antonio, Texas as the last of the makers and/or marketers of American-made, machine-manufactured, all-tobacco cigars. There were plenty of other entertaining features in this new issue, including a detailed look at the cigar-making process at the world’s largest cigar factory, Altadis U.S.A.’s Tabacalera de Garcia in La Romana, Dominican Republic. |
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Did you know?
“Cigars in glass jars have been popular for decades; the Belinda and Belinda Black have them today!
