Davidoff

Davidoff is a popular Swiss brand of luxury products, most well known for its high-end tobacco products, including cigars, cigarettes, and pipe tobaccos. more...

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History

Zino Davidoff was born on March 11, 1906 in Kiev in what is now the Ukraine, then a part of Czarist Russia. He was the eldest of four children born to Jewish tobacco merchant, Henri Davidoff. Even in his own autobiographical writings, the facts on Zino's youth are a bit hazy. His parents were either cigar merchants or cigarette manufacturers in Kiev. Fleeing the political turmoil and anti-Semitism prevalent in Russia, they emigrated to Geneva, Switzerland in 1911 and opened their own tobacconist shop in 1912. Finishing school in 1924, he went to Latin America to learn about the tobacco trade, spending time in such places as Argentina, Brazil, and finally Cuba where he spent two years working on a plantation and first encountered Cuban cigars.

Returning to Switzerland around 1930, he took over his parents' shop. What had originally been a modest smoke shop grew into a rich business during and after World War II. Switzerland, being a neutral country and spared much of the havoc being wreaked elsewhere in Europe, became a haven for wealthy tobacco customers. Zino was particularly successful in marketing the Hoyo de Monterrey Châteaux Series of Cuban cigars that had been created for Zurich cigar distributor A Dürr Co. in the 1940s and named after great Bordeaux wines. Around this time, Zino is also credited by many as having invented the first desktop cigar humidor, in order to preserve cigars at the same conditions of humidity and temperature under which they were rolled in Havana. Davidoff also had success writing several books on cigar smoking and Cuban cigar brands.

Cuban Davidoff cigars

In 1967, Davidoff was approached by Cubatabaco, Cuba's state tobacco monopoly after the Revolution, about creating a personal brand of cigars for his stores. The cigars were rolled in the newly-establish El Laguito factory in Havana, which had been established to roll Cuban President Fidel Castro's own private cigars, Cohíba. In 1969, the first productions of Davidoff cigars were released, which included the No. 1, the No. 2, and Ambassadrice (which all shared the same sizes as the early Cohiba line) and the Châteaux Series (now no longer under the Hoyo de Monterrey label, but exclusively made for the Davidoff marque).

In the 1970s, the Mille Series, a milder blend than the rest of the line, and the Dom Pérignon, named for the famous champagne, were released on the market. In 1986, a special limited release of 80 Aniversarios cigars were made to celebrate Zino's 80th birthday.

In 1982, the Château Yquem cigar produced by Davidoff was discontinued after the owner of Château d'Yquem wine protested their unauthorized use of the trade name. The Château Mouton Rothschild came out shortly after, though with a different blend and slightly different size than its predecessor.

Read more at Wikipedia.org