Cigar smoking, for most people, starts very casually, with the slightly intoxicating smoke of a fragrant leaf that provides a little social lubricant and relaxation, along with a pleasant flavour and aroma. From there, however, a deep ocean opens up – there is 500 years of history to explore, thousands of different releases to collect, techniques in storage to perfect, and nuances in flavour that can be debated endlessly.

Like most hobbies, cigar smoking has its share of fanatics and obsessives, and like any field where fanatics and obsessives are involved, a vast library of books have been written on the subject, stretching back well over a century.

The most common genre of cigar book is probably the introductory guide, which gives readers the basics about brands, sizes, smoking etiquette and storage and so on. Of the categories of book, it is unfortunately the one most often written on commission by non-experts and so contains a great many books with false or misleading information, or else very trivial content garnered from other sources.

There are, however, a few worthy examples – probably the most famous is Zino Davidoff’s The Connoisseur’s Book of the Cigar, which although dated (it was first published in 1969), gives a very readable perspective of the cigar industry of the day. More contemporary equivalents can be found in Nicholas Foulks’ Cigars: A Guide, or in The World of the Habano, the official guide released by the Cuban cigar monopoly, Habanos S.A.

The category of the ‘history book’ is much more diverse, as most books focus on some specific aspect of the cigar industry. Adriano Martínez Ruis’* book The Great Habano Factories is one of the better examples, combining well researched historical narrative with gorgeous illustrations, mainly of vintage cigar box labels. Of a different flavour is Jean Stubb’s Tobacco on the Periphery, which is a serious academic work, and quite dry as a result, but nonetheless tells the story of the role the tobacco industry has played in Cuban society since the 1860s and earlier in detail that no other English language work can match, and is required reading for those with a passion that extends to understanding the culture and historical events that shaped the world of modern tobacco.

The next category of book is the encyclopedia, which is only rarely attempted due to the immense amount of work required in their authorship. The most famous of these (and arguably the most famous cigar book in any category) is Min Ron Nee’s An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Post-Revolution Havana Cigars. Published in 2003, this was the first book to attempt to a catalogue of Cuban cigars, including all of the current models and hundreds of discontinued lines. Before this book, there had really been no resource for collectors that listed cigars available outside of the handful of lines carried in their local tobacconist. Nee also was the first to try and describe the process of ageing tobacco in a methodical way, and his book arguably created the market for vintage and collectable cigars we know today. Nee’sbook has become a collectable in and of itself, with copies today selling for $1,500 US and more (the original retail price was around $30).

Nee promised for years to release a second edition, which he envisioned as a work in six volumes totalling over 3,000 pages, however, it sadly remained incomplete at the time of his death in 2024. In lieu of Nee’s second edition, Alexander Groom’s El Habano Moderno: A Collector’s Guide to Cuban Cigars in the Modern Era (published 2023, with a second edition in 2024), unashamedly styles itself as a proto-sequel to Min Ron Nee’s work, picking up the catalogue where Nee left of in the early 2000s, including the particulars and high quality photos of about 1,200 different cigars, around two thirds of which are new releases since Nee’s book was published.

There a number of books about the process of tobacco cultivation and processing, which are of interest to those who want to understand the artisanal aspects of the cigar. For over forty years, Eumelio Espino Marrero led Cuba’s Tobacco Research Institute, which develops the genetics of their tobacco plants, as well as sets the farming and processing procedures for the entire Cuban industry. During his career, Espino authored a great many academic papers and technical manuals for tobacco workers, along with several books aimed at helping the consumer understand the intricacies of Cuban cigar production. The most recent (and best) of these is The Habano: From Seed to Cigar in 539 Steps, which is concisely written and readable, and illustrated with photos showing parts of the tobacco growing process that would normally be totally inaccessible to outsiders. Didier Houvenaghel’s The Cigar, From Soil to Soul treads a similar ground as Espino, but with somewhat more technical detail and consideration of the practices outside of Cuba. Houvenaghel is an agricultural engineer and creator of several cigar brands. He has written several books on the subject, each expanding on the last, with the latest and most complete version being published in 2022.

The final genre of book on cigars worth a mention are those not really about cigars themselves, but about the experiences to be had while smoking them. The most notable modern author writing in this fashion is Nick Hammond, with his books Around the World in 80 Cigars: The Travels of an Epicure, and its sequel There and Back Again. In these books, Hammond chronicles his travels as a lifestyle journalist and the adventures and misadventures that have befallen him, with each tale involving the smoking of a cigar. While perhaps not as educative as other titles mentioned in this article, Hammond’s books are nonetheless entertaining reading, particularly when done with a cigar in hand.

 

* Adriano Martínez Ruis sadly passed away in Cuba on 14th February 2014, a fact which went unreported in the international cigar community. In addition to The Great Habano Factories, he left behind a number of other works – the next most notable is The Great Book of the Habano, which is more of a general guide to the Cuban cigar industry and history.