A Glossy New Refuge for Connoisseurs of a Good Smoke

“Would you like a cigar?”

Publisher Robert M. Lockwood was inches along on his aromatic number, a Paul Garmirian, puffing with a smile of satisfaction.

Smoke, co-published with his brother George, is the Lockwood Trade Journal Co.’s new magazine celebrating “cigars, pipes and life’s other burning desires,” becomes available in the next few days, and nearly all 75,000 copies have been ordered by distributors and smoke shops.

“We’ll be out of copies by the end of the week,” Lockwood said Monday in his Times Square office.

The $3.95 premiere, which features a cigar-smoking Pierce Brosnan on the cover, contains an interview with the new James Bond (a Davidoff 4000 is the actor’s preferred smoke), a profile of the Cuban American family behind the Flor de Florez brand, a colorful spread from Cairo on the everyday use of water pipes, and a service feature on cigar “rooms” found on the Internet.

In addition, there are articles about mountain biking, collector’s editions of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels and a piece on the joys of the dry martini, which notes that Winston Churchill was such an extra-dry fanatic that he “was content to bow in the direction of France (the source of the best dry vermouths) when stirring.”.

In a health-conscious era, Smoke is but the latest glossy refuge for connoisseur smokers and drinkers. Others are expected to follow.

Cigar Aficionado, a handsome quarterly launched three years ago by editor-publisher Marvin R. Shanken, identified and cultivated the niche. A chronicle of good smokes and the good life, a showcase for great photography and name writers such as Gay Talese, this brother publication to Shanken’s Wine Spectator sells for $4.95 a copy and has become a magnet for advertisers wanting to reach an upscale audience. The 184-page Smoke will arrive on select newsstands along with Cigar Aficionado’s fattest issue to date--a 404-page winter heavyweight that includes ads for BMW, Tiffany & Co., Sulka luggage, Chivas Regal, Mercedes-Benz and other high-end goods.

Shanken, a Falstaffian figure who has become as visible in his magazine as Martha Stewart is in Martha Stewart Living, estimated his paid circulation at 175,000 to 200,000. “I did not want to die without having my own cigar magazine,” he said, “and I thought that there would be at least 20,000 nuts who would share my passion so that I wouldn’t embarrass myself. But what has happened is that cigars are now positioned as luxury items.”

In line with--some say because of--the success of Cigar Aficionado, sales of premium cigars in the United States have risen dramatically in the past three years. The increase has helped spur the start-up of cigar-friendly drinking establishments such as Bar and Books in New York and the Grand Havana Room in Los Angeles.

“Cigar Aficionado deserves a lot of credit for bringing attention to cigars, which, at the end of the day, are part of the good life,” said Bar and Books co-owner Mark Grossich, who opened three locations in Manhattan in the past four years. “Cigar Aficionado has led the way and I think that Smoke will expand the category.”

Shanken is poised to spin off the ad-free Cigar Insider, a monthly newsletter that promises expanded coverage of Cuban cigars (“with insider information on availability worldwide”) and other burning matters for those serious smokers who can’t wait the three months between issues of Aficionado.

The Lockwoods’ company has been serving tobacco retailers and manufacturers since 1872. The firm’s roster includes Tea & Coffee, Smokeshop and the century-old Tobacco International. To distinguish Smoke, the brothers plan to target a younger audience that they claim is not being served by the magazine’s main competitor.

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Not the End After All? Historian Robert K. Massie, author of “The Romanovs: The Final Chapter,” recently published by Random House, was joined in New York this week by a visitor from Europe, Prince Nicholas Romanov. The prince, born in 1922, told a gathering at the St. Regis Hotel of his concern that neither he nor any other relatives of Czar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra and their four children, slaughtered under Lenin’s orders in 1918, have been consulted by Moscow about the government’s plans to hold a formal funeral in St. Petersburg for the remains of the czar and his family. The remains were discovered near Ekaterinburg, Siberia, in 1991.

* Paul D. Colford is a columnist for Newsday. His column is published Fridays.