A passion, a meeting, a shared moment.
Symbolizing social success, it was reserved for the nineteenth and twentieth century elites of Western society.
Yet the cigar originated there over 3,000 years ago among Indians of South America: the Arawaks. They grew tobacco leaves, consuming them and also using them as a medicinal plant.
Discovered in Cuba and brought to Europe by Christopher Columbus, the cigar will be introduced by Jean Nicot with Catherine de Médicis. She will use it to relieve her headaches.
Subsequently, the grass to heal would become the grass to smoke. Ancient Egypt had already used it for embalming mummies.
If Alexander Dumas denigrates the cigar in "Impressions de voyage: de Paris à Cadix”, it is through his best-known character, the Count of Montecristo, that smokers still honor it today.
Today, the cigar has been emancipated, smoking is as fun as tasting a fine wine or delicacy.
"It carries the memory of the earth from which it came from, the expertise of those who have “grown” it, subtle blends that go into its composition... Each puff of a large Havana cigar plunges me on this curious Caribbean island and the incomparable land plantations of Pinar del Rio"(Alain Kleinmann).
There is nothing more natural, as were other artists able to do, than to address this universe from an Epicurean perspective. The cigar primarily remains a state of mind...
D.K.