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Product type | Cigar |
---|---|
Owner | Imperial Brands |
Produced by | Altadis USA |
Country | United States |
Introduced | 1840s |
Markets | United States |
Carcinogenicity: IARC group 1 |
Henry Clay is an American brand of cigars named after the early American politician Henry Clay.[1] The cigars are currently manufactured in the Dominican Republic.[2] The brand is currently owned by the Spanish company Altadis, a subsidiary of Imperial Brands.
History
[edit]![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Henry_Clay_%28cigar_brand%29_advertisement%2C_1905.jpg/170px-Henry_Clay_%28cigar_brand%29_advertisement%2C_1905.jpg)
Henry Clay was founded in the 1840s by a Spanish immigrant to Cuba, Julián Álvarez Granda.[3] The brand was nationalized by Fidel Castro's government following the Cuban Revolution, and manufacturing was severely reduced throughout the 1960s.[4]
The cigar's American Trademark was owned by the Henry Clay and Bock & Co. Ltd. located in Trenton, New Jersey. Henry Clay and Bock & Co. Ltd. became a component of the Tobacco Trust that, along with other trusts, was an object of the antitrust legislation of the United States.[5]
By 1986, Henry Clay's American trademark was owned by Consolidated Cigar Corpation, which started producing non-Cuban Henry Clays. The Consolidated Cigar Corporation was eventually purchased by Altadis.[6]
In popular culture
[edit]- In the Russian and Soviet poet, playwright and actor Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky's 1925 poem Блек энд уайт/Black and White portraying issues of racism and capitalist exploitation, the setting is a Henry Clay and Bock Ltd. cigar factory in Havana.
- Maurice Leblanc's gentleman thief Arsène Lupin was noted to have used a Henry Clay cigar to conceal a reply to an invented associate as a part of his escape from jail in Arsène Lupin in Prison.
- In the film Blackmail (1929 film) the blackmailer is offered a Henry Clay cigar but instead chooses a Corona.
- In George Simenon's novel, Pietr the Latvian , the book's namesake is observed by Inspector Maigret smoking a Henry Clay cigar.
- The Kurt Weill song 'Matrosen-Tango' (Sailor-Tango) includes the lyric 'Und Zigarren rauchen wir Henry Clay ... Denn andere Zigarren, die rauchen wir nicht' (And we smoke Henry Clay cigars... we don't smoke any other cigars).
- In Thomas Mann's 1924 novel The Magic Mountain, the character Hofrat Behrens remarks that he almost died smoking "two small Henry Clay's".
References
[edit]- ^ Joyce, James; Johnson, Jeri (1998), "Notes to paes 235-240", Ulysses, Cambridge: Oxford University Press: 873, ISBN 978-0-19-283464-5
- ^ Shanken, Marvin R. (2005), Cigar Companion, Cambridge: Running Press, p. 41, ISBN 978-0-7624-1957-9
- ^ "DEATH OF JULIAN ALVAREZ.; A MAN WHO MADE MILLIONS OUT OF THE FAMOUS "HENRY CLAY" CIGAR". The New York Times. December 17, 1885.
- ^ Communications inc, M. Shanken. "Henry Clay War Hawk Gets A Churchill". Cigar Aficionado. Retrieved February 6, 2023.
- ^ Moody, John (1904), The Truth About The Trusts: A Description and Analysis of the American Trust Movement, New York: Moody Publishing Company, p. 91
- ^ Inc, M. Shanken Communications. "Henry Clay War Hawk Gets A Churchill". Cigar Aficionado. Retrieved October 24, 2023.
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External links
[edit]- Henry Clay at Altadis USA