New Life for Henry Clay

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From Rich Perelman at CigarCyclopedia:

You know the names of today’s great brands. Davidoff, Montecristo, Macanudo, Partagas, Arturo Fuente, Padron and so on.

One hundred years ago, Henry Clay would have been one of the first names on the list. Maybe it will be again!?

Named for one of America’s great politicians and statesmen of the early to mid-1800s, the brand reportedly developed out of Clay’s ownership of a tobacco plantation in Cuba. After serving as Senator from Kentucky in 1806-07 and from 1810-11, he was so admired that upon his election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1811, he was immediately elected by his colleagues to be Speaker of the House!

He served off and on as Senator and Representative from Kentucky from 1806 to 1852 and was U.S. Secretary of State from 1825-29. He ran for President three times, but was defeated by John Quincy Adams in 1824, Andrew Jackson in 1832 and by James K. Polk in 1844. When he died in 1852, he was the first to be given the honor of lying in state in the rotunda of the Capitol.

When the Cuban tobacco industry was aggressively aggregated by large corporations at the end of the 19th Century and beginning of the 20th Century, Henry Clay was one of the leading brands in the world, owned by the Tabacalera Cubana, which focused on the American market.

In 1904, the Henry Clay line included six shapes – all perfectos – which retailed from 15 cents (the 4 3/8-inch by 52-ring Cadet) up to 50 cents for the 6 5/8-inch by 56-ring Secretary of the Navy!

In recent years, Henry Clay has been a modestly-priced Dominican-made cigar with a rustic feel and Connecticut-grown maduro wrappers. It was offered for years in just three shapes with the cigars banded together uncellophaned inside the box to create some unevenness in the shape of some of the cigars. It had some devoted followers, but not enough to make the brand important.

Additional versions of the Henry Clay line were introduced, with Habana 2000 wrappers and more conventional packing, but they also failed to make much of an impression on the market.

Now, a new blend of the venerable Henry Clay brand is available, this time produced in Honduras at Altadis’ Flor de Copan factory, already well known for the new, powerful Saint Luis Rey and Maria Guerrero brands.

This version features a Nicaraguan-grown wrapper and binder and a combination of filler leaves from Honduras, Nicaragua and Peru, offered in boxes of 20 by J-R Cigars.

The taste is reported to be rich with a taste of spice and a soft, slightly sweet finish. It’s also priced well, at $44.95 to $59.95 per box. There’s a choice of five sizes, from the robusto-sized Dalia (5 x 50) to the double corona-sized Churchill (7 x 52).

Very near to the end of his life, Clay became a national hero once again by putting together the Compromise of 1850, which helped to stave off the Civil War for a decade. Maybe this new life can make him a hero to cigar smokers in a new century!

Posted on Monday, April 11th, 2005 at 2:45 pm.