Cigar Aficionado is the magazine, launched in 1992 by Marvin R. Shanken, that pulled cigar smoking out of the back room and turned it into a recognized culture, helping fuel the 1990s boom with ratings, blind tastings, and celebrity covers. To really get why it landed, it helps to zoom out on the history of cigars themselves and where the culture stood before any of this.
For most of the 20th century, cigars were part of American life but nobody talked about them the way we do now. They were enjoyed quietly, passed between friends, shared in back rooms, smoked after dinner, saved for the big occasions. The tradition was there. The shared language wasn't. Cigar smoking existed, but cigar culture was scattered.
That started to move in the early 1990s. Politics, imports, and the rise of premium cigars made outside Cuba were already reshaping the industry. What it didn't have was a central voice, something to tie makers, smokers, and a growing market into a culture people could name and discuss.
Cigar Aficionado didn't invent cigars or premium tobacco. What it brought was visibility, structure, and storytelling to a world that had mostly run behind the scenes. Its arrival was a turning point, not just for one magazine, but for how cigars got talked about and understood in the modern era.
Before Cigar Aficionado hit, the cigar world looked completely different. Cigars were around. Information wasn't. No widespread tasting guides, no shared rating systems, almost no media built around fine cigars.
Knowledge came from tobacconists, longtime smokers, or the manufacturers themselves. Want to learn about cigar makers, cigar manufacturing, or different cigar regions? You learned by smoking and by listening. Word of mouth ran the show.
The Cuban embargo had already reshaped imports decades earlier, pushing American smokers to look beyond Cuban cigars. Dominican cigars and other handmade smokes from Central America kept climbing in quality and availability. Still, they mostly existed without fanfare. The business was steady, but it sure wasn't mainstream.
Cigar smoking also lacked a single identity. All kinds of people enjoyed them, but they weren't pinned to any particular lifestyle. No national events, no major lounges acting as cultural hubs, little crossover with the spirits world or the food scene.
Short version: cigars existed, but the conversation around them didn't. That gap was an opening. Not for a magazine telling people what to smoke, but one explaining why cigars mattered, how they were made, and how they fit a bigger way of enjoying time, craft, and ritual. That opening is what Cigar Aficionado would step into.
Cigar Aficionado didn't show up because the cigar world demanded it. It showed up because someone saw cigars building toward a bigger cultural moment, and nobody was documenting it. Per Cigar Aficionado, the magazine was launched in 1992 by Marvin R. Shanken, after he 'returned from a trip to Cuba in October 1991' with the idea.
It began in 1992 under Shanken, published by Shanken Communications, the same outfit behind Wine Spectator. Shanken already had a proven playbook: take luxury seriously, assume the reader's curious, and lean on long-form storytelling.
Cigars were rarely covered as their own subject back then. No widely recognized cigar magazine, no consistent coverage of cigar making, no editorial voice aimed squarely at premium cigars. What you had instead were scattered conversations and informal tips traded between smokers.
From day one, Cigar Aficionado wasn't built as a trade journal or an insider newsletter. It treated cigars as part of a wider lifestyle, right alongside food, travel, and spirits, handing fine cigars a cultural legitimacy they hadn't had.
The first issue spelled that out. Instead of pushing sales or industry hype, it centered education, craftsmanship, and context. That tack carried it past the established smokers and into a broader crowd curious about cigar culture and the good life cigars stood for.
When Cigar Aficionado dropped its first issue in the fall of 1992 in New York City, there was zero guarantee anyone outside a small circle of smokers would care. Per Cigar Aficionado, Shanken pre-launched with extensive market research, '1,300 four-page surveys of cigar smokers' that revealed an audience with average household income of $194,000 and net worth of $1.54 million.
It debuted quietly, no booming market, no mainstream buzz behind it. Cigars were still a private thing, and consumption was steady rather than exploding. What the first issue brought instead was perspective.
With articles tying cigars to craftsmanship, travel, and tradition, the magazine framed smoking as intentional, not indulgent. Early coverage ran through cigar regions, cigar making, and reviewed cigars presented straight, no exaggeration.
That tone landed. Tobacconists noticed. Manufacturers paid attention. And cigar lovers finally had a publication that matched how they already smoked, thoughtfully, deliberately, without pretense.
Looking back, the first issue didn't cause the boom. But it shaped how people understood cigars right before everything blew up.
By the mid-1990s, cigars were everywhere. A quiet pastime turned loud across business, media, and pop culture. The cigar boom was on. Per Cigar Aficionado, the magazine 'turned a profit in the first year, which is unheard of in publishing', confirming the demand for premium cigar lifestyle journalism.
It didn't start the surge, but it shaped how the boom played out. As interest grew, the magazine became a reference point, wiring cigar makers, retailers, and smokers into one shared ecosystem. Features, ratings, and interviews gave structure to a market that was expanding fast.
It also put a spotlight on handmade cigars made outside Cuba. Dominican cigars, Nicaraguan cigars, and other rising regions earned legitimacy as their makers sharpened the craft and reached bigger audiences. When the boom finally cooled, the map had changed for good. Cigars weren't a fringe indulgence anymore. They were part of a recognized cigar culture.
As the boom picked up speed, Cigar Aficionado became more than a cigar magazine. It became a cultural signal. Per Cigar Aficionado, the magazine's mid-1990s celebrity covers, Schwarzenegger on the premiere issue, then Demi Moore, Linda Evangelista, and Pierce Brosnan, drove unprecedented mainstream attention to cigars.
Those cover stories did a lot of the work. With faces like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Jordan, Jack Nicholson, and even loud voices like Rush Limbaugh, the magazine recast cigars as a piece of success, confidence, and personal ritual instead of secrecy or excess.
These weren't drive-by cameos either. The long-form profiles dug into why cigars mattered to these people and how smoking fit their lives. Some interviews ran deep into personal philosophy, including the now-famous two-hour sit-down with Fidel Castro.
The upshot was reach that blew way past traditional cigar circles. Cigars got tied to achievement, reflection, and the kind of pause successful people guard on purpose.
And the celebrity stuff never crowded out substance. Profiles ran next to features on cigar makers, tobacco, and premium cigar brands like Arturo Fuente, which kept the credibility intact even as readership ballooned.
No chapter in the magazine's history drew more attention, or more controversy, than its run-ins with Cuban cigars and Cuban politics.
Cuba always loomed over cigar culture. Decades after the U.S. embargo, Cuban cigars were still the benchmark, the bar a lot of premium smokes got measured against. That mystique never died, and the magazine didn't pretend otherwise. The moment that locked it in was the Fidel Castro interview.
It was a gutsy call. With Cuban cigars illegal to import into the States, putting the leader who nationalized the island's cigar industry front and center drew heavy scrutiny. Critics hammered the optics. Supporters pointed to the journalistic value.
What gets missed is why it mattered at all. For cigar lovers, Cuban cigars weren't just products. They were history, politics, and craft braided together. By engaging straight with Cuban officials and the legacy of Cuban tobacco, the magazine admitted what readers already felt: cigars don't exist in a vacuum. Policy, geography, and power shape them as much as soil and fermentation.
The interview drove home something smokers knew in their gut, that cigars carry stories way past the humidor. Made in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, or Nicaragua, a cigar reflects the world it came from.
That willingness to wade into the messy, complicated stuff set Cigar Aficionado apart from a plain lifestyle magazine. It became a serious voice in the industry, one ready to chase the whole picture instead of just the easy parts.
One of the magazine's most lasting moves was bringing structure to how cigars got judged.
Before it, most cigar knowledge was personal. You found a good smoke through experience, a tip, or dumb luck. Cigar Aficionado rolled out blind tastings, standardized reviews, and numerical ratings that handed smokers a shared reference point.
Blind tastings were the core of it. Cigars got reviewed with no brand attached, which shifted the focus to construction, balance, and overall performance. That let readers compare across brands and price tiers right at the height of the boom.
For manufacturers, those ratings hit hard. A strong review could lift a blend overnight. A weak score often sent them back to tweak. Over time, the process bled into blending calls, aging practices, and quality control across the premium industry.
Some makers doubted whether a number could capture something as personal as taste, but even the critics admitted the impact. Blind tastings didn't dictate enjoyment. They just gave the cigar world a shared language right when it needed one.
As the readership grew, Cigar Aficionado turned conversation into community.
Events like the Big Smoke, later the Annual Big Smoke, gave cigar lovers a place to gather in person, smoke together, and rub shoulders with the makers and insiders. Hosted in cities like Las Vegas, they cemented lounges and big tastings as social hubs instead of niche oddities.
The Big Smoke's success said something bigger: cigar culture had gone shared, visible, and social in a way it never had been.
Behind the curtain, the magazine's direction came from experienced editorial hands. Under Shanken, the standards mirrored Wine Spectator's. Over time, voices like David Savona, who served as executive editor, sharpened the tasting language, the review methodology, and the coverage as the industry matured.
Earlier contributors like Gordon Mott helped set the magazine's voice in those formative years, balancing accessibility with authority.
As it evolved, the role shifted from discovery to documentation, tracking trends, production shifts, and long-term developments through features grounded in research rather than hype.
No question, Cigar Aficionado's influence looks different now than it did at the peak of the boom. Back then, a strong rating or a high-profile cover could move the needle almost instantly. The market was smaller, info was harder to dig up, and fewer voices steered the conversation. One publication could basically gatekeep attention and legitimacy.
Today that's spread way out. Smokers learn from a dozen sources now: local tobacconists, online forums, social media, lounges, podcasts, straight talks with the makers. Information moves faster, opinions are more varied, and personal taste carries more weight at the register.
That doesn't mean the magazine faded into irrelevance. What changed is how the influence works. Instead of defining the whole conversation, it now sits inside it, offering historical context, long-view perspective, and a standard reference point in an increasingly fragmented culture.
The ratings still matter. The features still carry weight. They're just not the only voice in the room anymore, and that shift mirrors the industry growing up. In a lot of ways, it's a healthy change.
Cigar Aficionado still matters because it gave the cigar world a shared language. It documented makers, regions, and processes right as premium cigars were gaining global steam. It brought structure to how cigars got judged. And it built a cultural framework that connected growers, blenders, manufacturers, retailers, and smokers.
You can still see that influence today. At After Action Cigars, that shared foundation matters daily. Recommending cigars online, with no physical counter, lives or dies on clear, consistent communication. Words like flavor, body, construction, and balance only work because everyone's speaking the same language.
Cigar Aficionado didn't invent cigar culture. It brought clarity and coherence to it when the industry needed it most. Even now that the culture's gotten more personal and decentralized, the magazine is still part of the foundation it's all built on.
Understanding the history of cigars, means taking a look at Altadis, because it gives us a behind-the-scenes view of one of the most influential companies in the modern cigar industry. While many cigar smokers recognize the names on the band, fewer...
Cigar Aficionado is the magazine, launched in 1992 by Marvin R. Shanken, that pulled cigar smoking out of the back room and turned it into a recognized culture, helping fuel the 1990s boom with ratings, blind tastings, and celebrity covers....
As the cigar world expanded beyond Cuba, the industry didn’t just change geography, it changed how people thought about cigars. New countries, new tobaccos, and new factories reshaped what premium cigars could be. Some brands chased growth and novelty. Others...
