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ban. In and beyond a string of new spaces like the Emory’s lounge, the cigar has evolved into a luxury product with lifestyle- driven social media accounts. They project an image that is far removed from those of the cigar-chomping archetype, and suggest a thriving contemporary demand for prized Cohibas and Montecristos. So why is a fug of fear hanging over the capital’s increasingly sophisticated cigar lounges? The answer lies a mile or so to the east at
Westminster, where proposed legislation threatens to stub out London’s cigar culture. ‘It will be catastrophic, because it will essen- tially make a product illegal without making it illegal, kill off small businesses and affect the reputation of England [as a cigar centre],’ says Jemma Freeman, the chair of Hunters & Frankau (est. 1790), the UK’s exclusive dis- tributor for Havana cigars.
The primary goal of the Tobacco and Va- pes Bill, which is going through the Lords, is to put out cigarettes once and for all. Starting in 2027, nobody born from 2009 onwards will be allowed to buy tobacco products; the law will effectively raise the legal smoking age by one year every year. But of more immediate concern to the cigar sector are proposals to close exemptions including more relaxed rules on plain packaging – and the anomaly of ‘sampling lounges’. It is legal to smoke cigars indoors at a cou-
ple of dozen of these venues across the coun- try if you are sampling a stick you’ve just bought there, in a sufficiently ventilated room. In April, Labour grandee Lord Faulkner said the exemption is ‘being ex- ploited and abused’ while he proposed an amendment to the bill. Venues including luxury hotels with lounges were operating ‘far outside the spirit of the law’, he said. Freeman, who comes from a long line of
cigar makers and importers, says the indus- try supports tightening controls on ciga- rettes. But she says the inclusion of cigars betrays a lack of understanding. ‘We’re talking about small, specialised
businesses selling an incredibly occasionally used product,’ she says. ‘I find it hard to com- pare someone who’s smoking 40 cigarettes a day to someone who’s decided to celebrate his 50th birthday by having a cigar with his best friend because that’s what his dad would have done.’ She also points out that cigar smokers
draw smoke into their mouths for the taste, rather than into the lungs. She adds: ‘Every piece of research that exists supports the fact that cigar smokers tend to be 35 and above. This is not a gateway product.’ Yet it is perhaps a cruel irony that the 2007 indoor smoking ban was in part responsible for modernising a would-be relic. Before then, Freeman says, most public cigar smok- ing took place aſter dinner in restaurants within certain smart postcodes. ‘That disap- peared overnight and we were looking at how we could provide people with an alter- native space,’ she recalls. She says the Lanes- borough hotel and the Boisdale restaurants were among the first players in hospitality to offer aspirational rather than apologetic post-2007 cigar terraces. Some of the Lanes- borough’s biggest spenders smoked cigars. ‘They thought if they didn’t provide them with a place to enjoy cigars, they might go elsewhere,’ Freeman says.
Meanwhile, the exemption for ‘specialist
tobacconists’ to allow customers to sample cigars has evolved. These lounges still in- clude addresses on St James’s Street, aka ‘Ci- gar Mile’, where, for example, James J Fox has a busy upstairs lounge. But members’ clubs and hotels soon realised they could embrace the same exemption to compete for big spenders with ever plusher indoor spac- es, where premium drinks could also be sold alongside cigars that range in price from £45 to £1,500 per stick at the Emory. Curran says the Arts Club in Mayfair, just
across Piccadilly from St James’s Street, helped raise the bar with Oscuro, which opened in 2019. It had a fresh Cuban floral theme that eschewed the dark-wood fusti- ness typically associated with cigar smoking. Sophisticated ventilation systems keep the smoke from collecting. Other aspirational lounges include Birley
Cigars, the lounge at 5 Hertford Street. More recently, the Peninsula Hotel on Hyde Park Corner opened a rooſtop cigar lounge in 2023. There’s another newish cigar space at Upstairs at Langan’s, the members’ club above the legendary brasserie, where whis- ky and cigar tasting events quickly sell out. The Connaught, which shares an owner with the Emory, also opened a lounge in 2023. ‘There are so many beautiful places now,’ says Curran, who got his first job at Oscuro, retraining there aſter years working as a Michelin-level wine sommelier. Created to fulfil demand prompted by a
change in the law, these spaces have steadily fuelled and followed an image shiſt. Social media has played a part in the move of cigars away from old-fashioned, fusty and perhaps a little corny into something more obviously refined, aspirational and perhaps even cool. New brands on the scene such as Swiss firm EGM, which was founded in 2017 by then 31-year-old entrepreneur Ettore Gabriele Moraschinelli, have gone viral on TikTok with videos of parties in Havana and bikini- clad women smoking coronas on beaches. Meanwhile, London’s cigar lounges, par-
ticularly those in luxury hotels, benefited from booming demand for cigars in Asia and the Middle East. (Cuba’s top cigar maker, Habanos, which is still 50 per cent state- owned, announced record sales of $827 mil- lion in 2024, largely as a result of Asian de- mand.) Collectors increasingly hold sway as the value of cigars soars. At the glitzy Habanos World Days Gala Dinner at the V&A
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