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RAISING A CIGAR TO THE NEW YEAR

Red Lion, Pennsylvania celebrates its cigar heritage

Los Angeles, December 30 – There was a time when cities celebrated their cigar-making factories and the brands that made them famous.

Long after the factories have closed, Red Lion, Pennsylvania still does.

There were so many cigar factories in the area in the 1920s that an annual guide to Pennsylvania’s York County cigar manufacturers and factories was needed to keep track. In the 1926-27 edition of the York County cigar maker’s guidebook, the authors noted with pride that one out of every eight cigars made in the U.S. the previous year was crafted there.

That called for a celebration . . . seventy years later.

Starting on December 31, 1997, a unique smoker with an eight-foot-long cigar (pictured above) was raised to the top of the Borough Hall to bring in the New Year. The cigar itself is made of fiberglass, is 18 inches in diameter and glows on the way up! The “raising of the cigar” is now a tradition.

It’s a popular one in the town of 6,000, with between 1-3,000 folks expected to show up, depending on the weather. This New Year’s Eve has more surprises as well, as the borough’s new logo will be unveiled and there will be a massive cake large enough to feed 1,000.

Red Lion isn’t unique in holding unusual New Year’s Eve programs, which seem to be the norm in Pennsylvania. In Mechanicsburg, they drop a wrench (Mechanics-burg, get it?) . . . Elizabethtown, home to a giant M&M/Mars plant, lowers a giant M&M . . .Dillsburg will lower a pickle (Dills-burg! Oy!) . . . Shippensburg (Shipp-ens-burg) will drop an anchor . . . and Lebanon will drop a specially-made 7-foot, 6-inch-long, 120-pound bologna at midnight. I have no idea what bologna has to do with Lebanon. Really.

Although cigar manufacturing has long left Red Lion, the town’s heritage is still alive with the Red Lion cigar brand, distributed by the Heavenly Cigar Company, better known for its hot-selling line of flavored cigars. The Dominican-made Red Lion brand of today is offered in two sizes with either a Brazilian maduro or Dominican-grown Rosado wrapper, both generating a medium-to-full-bodied flavor.

Tobacco Saving Lives!
New activity in the search for antidotes to anthrax poisoning has led to the use of tobacco plants as an engine for safe production.

With the dangerous anthrax postal scare a couple of years back, the medical community has been searching for a new way to combat the impact of another attack. The medical research website CheckBioTech.org reports that the current antidote, Biothrax, has several drawbacks including some unpleasant side effects.

Enter tobacco. Development of vaccines using plants has shown great promise, as the plants can produce significant amounts of desired genes or compounds during their growth phase. Tobacco grows quickly, reaching maturity in six to eight weeks.

In addition, as tobacco is only used – at present – for tobacco products such as cigars, cigarettes and chew, it is not part of either human or animal feed crops. Therefore, there’s almost no chance for contamination of any food supplies by having tobacco mixed with crops like corn, wheat or other feed crops.

Researchers have estimated that for the purpose of generating vaccines, up to 8,000 tobacco plants could be planted per acre and, even after losing half of the desired antigen during purification, some 400 million doses of vaccine could be produced from that single acre!

There’s a considerable way to go before a tobacco-based anthrax vaccine becomes reality, but work by research teams from the University of Central Florida in Orlando and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases indicates that the potential is good.

The next time someone tells you about the destructive power of tobacco, tell them that tobacco is at the center of the development of vaccines to counter anthrax. So there!

From the Cubador: New Romeo y Julieta Book:
Continuing its four-year-old series of “humidors like books” specialty products, Habanos S.A. has introduced yet another novelty, the Romeo y Julieta Case.

It’s a cigar case/humidor in book form, containing 20 specially-made Romeo y Julietas in the “Fabulosos No. 6" format: 7 inches in length by 50 ring. It’s a treat of a double corona, not normally part of the Romeo y Julieta line. Only 500 cases – that’s just 10,000 cigars in total – were made.

The Romeo y Julieta case is the fourth in the “humidor as book” Habanos Collection:

> 2001: Cuaba, 300 cases featuring 10 Salomones (7 1/4 inches by 56 ring perfectos).

> 2002: Partagas, 500 cases featuring 20 Serie C No. 1 (6 5/8 inches by 48 ring)

> 2003: Hoyo de Monterrey, 500 cases featuring 20 Lusitanias (7 5/8 inches by 49 ring)

And now Romeo. They’re available mostly at the worldwide network of Casas del Habano; it’ll be a happy new year indeed if you can find one.
~ Rich Perelman

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