Henry Clay (cigar)

Henry Clay
Product typeCigar
OwnerImperial Brands
Produced byAltadis USA
CountryUnited States
Introduced1840s
MarketsUnited 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

1905 Henry Clay advertisement

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 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 Corporation, which started producing non-Cuban Henry Clays. The Consolidated Cigar Corporation was eventually purchased by Altadis.[6]

  • In the Russian and Soviet poet, playwright, and actor Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky's 1925 poem Блек энд уайт/Black and White , which portrayed issues of racism and capitalist exploitation, the setting is a Henry Clay and Bock & Co. 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".
  • In chapter 15 of James Joyce's Ulysses, the character of subsheriff Long John Fanning is described as "smoking a pungent Henry Clay."
  • In chapter 12 of Jean-Paul Sartre's 1945 novel The Age of Reason, the character Boris writes in a letter that he smoked a Henry Clay to the end without the ash falling.

References

  1. ↑ Joyce, James; Johnson, Jeri (1998), "Notes to paes 235-240", Ulysses, Cambridge: Oxford University Press, p. 873, ISBN 978-0-19-283464-5
  2. ↑ Shanken, Marvin R. (2005), Cigar Companion, Cambridge: Running Press, p. 41, ISBN 978-0-7624-1957-9
  3. ↑ "DEATH OF JULIAN ALVAREZ.; A MAN WHO MADE MILLIONS OUT OF THE FAMOUS "HENRY CLAY" CIGAR". The New York Times. December 17, 1885.
  4. ↑ Communications inc, M. Shanken. "Henry Clay War Hawk Gets A Churchill". Cigar Aficionado. Retrieved February 6, 2023.
  5. ↑ Moody, John (1904), The Truth About The Trusts: A Description and Analysis of the American Trust Movement, New York: Moody Publishing Company, p. 91
  6. ↑ "Henry Clay War Hawk Gets A Churchill". Cigar Aficionado. Retrieved October 24, 2023.


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