Are cigar-lounge trends shifting? These three NC women have something to say about that.
If you don’t seek out places to go smoke cigars in and around Charlotte, you might be completely oblivious. But if you do, you may have noticed ...
... one, that a growing number of options have opened up in just the past year and a half or so, including:
- Havana Smoke & Reserve in uptown;
- Ash & Barrel Cigar Social Lounge in Cornelius;
- Whiskgars Cigar & Co. in Gastonia; and
- The Royal Cigar Bar & Bistro in Fort Mill, South Carolina.
... and two, that these places aren’t just “old boys clubs” anymore. It’s not just that their clienteles are skewing younger, either; no, it’s that women are in actual positions of power, as opposed to just being reduced to window dressing.
It’s a pretty significant shift in an industry that is strongly influenced by national magazines like Cigar Aficionado (tagline: “the good life magazine for men”) and Cigar Snob — which, every two months, features on its cover a sexualized image of a young woman holding a cigar.
“It’s always some lady in lingerie,” McKenzie Delaney says. “I’m like, ‘You’re never gonna get the smoke out of that.’”
Delaney, 28, has been the humidor manager at Charlotte’s The Vintage Whiskey and Cigar Bar since moving three months ago to North Carolina from Maryland, where she spent almost 10 years in sales at Davidus Cigars in her hometown of Ellicott City.
The Vintage opened in South End in February 2021.
Four months later, 53-year-old Lillian Johnson opened The Saddle Club at Seventeen Ninety One, a high-end private club with a dedicated upstairs cigar lounge and humidor — off Brawley Road in Mooresville — that has an initial membership fee of $5,000 and costs $150 a month thereafter. She says roughly half of the 150 members of the club she operates are women.
Yet another success story in the cigar-lounge space in the Charlotte area is Tailored Smoke, a Black-owned business that was founded as an online retailer in 2015 and has since grown to include full-scale lounges at Queen City Quarter (formerly the EpiCentre) in uptown; in the Concord Mills area; and by next month in Hickory, as well. Both the Charlotte and Concord locations are under the general management of Jazzmine “Jazz” Barriner, a 31-year-old veteran who has been smoking cigars since she was 17.
There are caveats, of course, when considering both the proliferation of cigar bars/clubs/lounges and how women fit into the picture.
The hobby/habit is still pretty niche, in general. According to the Centers for Disease Control, just 3.5% of all U.S. adults were identified as current smokers of cigars in 2020 — and along gender lines, it broke at 6.3% male and a minuscule 0.8% female (although this still translates to 2.65 million adult American women, and when put that way, it sounds like a lot). Also well worth noting is that the CDC says smoking cigars poses serious health risks, and determines they “are not a safe alternative to cigarettes” (even if many cigar smokers disagree with the assessment).
Cigar clubs with craft cocktails, small bites
Be that as it may, this new generation of clubs does feel different. They feel classy, they look sleek, they often can hook you up with a craft cocktail or a small plate made of farm-fresh ingredients. And in many cases, they have women on staff who know way more about cigars than you might think.
We recently sat down with Delaney of The Vintage, Johnson of The Saddle Club, and Barriner of Tailored Smoke to hear them talk about some of these issues, in recognition of Women’s History Month.
The conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Is this all just a trend?
Johnson: I think COVID, honestly, forced people to branch out and just do different things. There was a huge uptick in (the consumption of) whiskey and cigars during that time, and in people just trying to entertain themselves at home. ...
For years, our property — our private property, an equestrian property — was a top wedding venue in the area. But I was losing business because of COVID, and I decided I didn’t know if there was gonna be an end in sight. Like all of us, I was probably a little scared. I thought, What can I do differently?
My husband is a big cigar smoker and whiskey drinker. I’m personally not a cigar smoker, but I do love bourbon. I just kind of hashed it out. For zoning purposes, I had to be a private club. I went to the county and got permission to open and got my tobacco license, got my liquor license, and in 2021 finished my spring weddings and then had about 45 days to transition what was kind of like a ballroom into a bar with a dining room.
We made the upstairs the cigar lounge, to separate the smoking from the downstairs. We really have a nice humidor. We do have women smokers, but the majority of them don’t.
I hope it’s not just a trend. I hope it stays. I’ve got a lot of cigars to sell.
Barriner: I don’t think it’s a trend. I think it’s something that’s gonna continue to grow.
And I agree about COVID. Before Tailored Smoke, I was working for Homeland Security, and I was teleworking. So I went from maybe smoking three or four cigars a day — ’cause I had to go into the office — to smoking about five to eight a day, ’cause I’m at home.
It seemed like more people were smoking cigars in general. People that never smoked a cigar a day in their life, they were at home with a cigar and a drink. Then once COVID was over and lounges started to open up, a lot more people started to go out and explore different places that they would probably never have gone before. Before, it wasn’t normal for people just to wake up on a Thursday and be like, “Let’s go to a cigar lounge.” Now it seems to be a thing: “Oh, look — there’s a new lounge here. Let’s go try it out.”
There are a lot of females who smoke cigars on a daily, consistent basis. But it’s true that typically when you do think of cigar smokers, you think about, like, you think of men. And women who smoke, it’s usually a man that gave them that first cigar.
For me it was my dad; when I was 17, he gave me my very first cigar. Which I did not like. It took me probably about another three months to smoke another cigar. When I was getting done with basic training, I went out with a couple of shipmates, and they’re like, ‘Yeah, we’re going to smoke cigars, and I was like, ‘OK. Fine.’ I went into the lounge, and it was me and only two other women there. And the two women, they weren’t smoking. They were just drinking.
Delaney: My background education-wise was in anthropology, so my (introduction to cigar culture was founded on) the intrigue of seeing how men act in that environment when they’re not around anybody else, in their own down time, when they’re sitting in the lounge. And I realized the communal aspect of the culture was just so beautiful. There’s so much that you can gravitate toward, whether it’s the actual cultures of the region, whether it’s just the tobacco itself, or the people who make the cigars, or the traditions that are underneath all of them.
In terms of COVID, I think it really birthed the new type of experience of enjoying cigars, outside of that typical retail kind of vibe and into that mindset of something more communal. More time to spend with those people who know cigars as opposed to just coming in, having that one smoke, that one engagement. Unlike the retail side, where I spent 10 years, on the bar side, you can put the effort towards that person who really wants to learn.
I’ll give you an hour-long talk about those things. And if you don’t want that, I’m still gonna get you a good cigar ... and you can sit there and get some work done while you’re smoking it.
Going deeper on stereotypes
Delaney: I get asked at least three times a week if I smoke cigars. The entire time I’m working, I know I have to have one in my hand. Otherwise someone’s going to ask me that question. Recently, I had a rep walk in, meet me and then ask me if I smoke cigars. And I’m just like, “No, they just hired somebody unqualified. I don’t even know how I got here. Could you help me?” It’s that tone of like — just because you’re there, and you’re a woman — of like, “OK, what’s the catch?”
Then there are the situations where, because you’re a woman, they’re like, “Oh, would you like a flavored cigar?” I’ve seen a grown-ass man drink an apple martini at a bar and nobody said a word to him, but if I have a super-earthy, flavorful cigar that’s not infused, they’re like, “Well, that’s madness. You shouldn’t be doing that.” If I bring my pipe out at work, they’re like, “No, no, no. What’s going on here?”
Or there’s places that do “ladies night.” I’m like, what’s the male version? A “ladies night” for ladies, that’s fine, but you’re also isolating us. It should just be called “Everybody’s Gonna Smoke Today.” And leave it at that.
Barriner: I’m not gonna lie. We do “ladies night.” We started doing it more so that females would become comfortable. And we’ve done a couple “Cigar 101”s specifically tailored toward female smokers who have never smoked a cigar, looked at a cigar, or cut a cigar. We want them to know, “Hey, it may be six guys in here and you may be the only female, but you should be comfortable enough to come in and enjoy your cigar and your drink.”
To speak to the apple martini thing, I have one guy who I pick on every day. He drinks an amaretto sour, or he drinks peach schnapps and grenadine, and he’ll get the sweetest cigar that we have — and I just will look at him, I’m like, “Bro, that is so much sugar, you’re making me feel nauseous.”
Then I’ll have a guy come in with a lady, and he’ll be like, “Yeah, get her a ladies’ cigar,” and I’m standing there smoking a Double Ligero LFD and I’m like, “Well, this is a ladies’ cigar.” He’s like, “I mean get her one of the sweet, fruity ones.” I’m like, “That doesn’t make it a ladies’ cigar. I know more men that smoke those.” So there’s that stigma: “If it’s not sweet and flavored, it’s not for women.” Nooo, that’s not how it works.
Delaney: There’s this assumption that, like, “OK, yeah, she’s working in the humidor, but she probably doesn’t know that much. So if she’s gonna try to sell me on something, I should basically reject it.” You have to spend a lot of time just gaining your customers’ confidence. ...
I’m pretty sure we’re the ones who are rolling your cigars, testing your color, testing your actual flavor profiles. we have our hands in every single facet of the cigar-making process, but it’s this approach that like, “You can be involved with this, but you’re not going to be on the forefront of presenting it” — unless it’s Cigar Snob Magazine. ...
I think there’s also a historical view from the perspective that, if you smoke a cigar, you’re taking a little bit of your femininity away. ... More women who have that viewpoint are now starting to get away from that. They’re like, “I can do whatever I want.”
Johnson: From my standpoint, like I said, I don’t smoke, but ... when anybody asks me what I do and I say, “I own a cigar and whiskey lounge,” they’re like, “Oh. Really?” ... It is a little sad that you still get that.”
“You know, it is 2023,” Johnson adds, before closing by saying — with a hint of sarcasm but, more than anything else, with conviction — “and women are doing all sorts of things.”
This story was originally published March 14, 2023 at 6:00 AM.
