Zino Davidoff: 'Smoke less,but better and longer'.

“The cigar has been my life,” Zino Davidoff wrote in 'The Connoisseur’s Book of the Cigar', originally published in 1967 in French and later in five other languages. “I owe it everything: my deepest pleasure and my anguish, the joys in my work as well as my leisure time.”

Zino Davidoff was born on March 11, 1906 in Kiev in what is now Ukraine. 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, as he was quite young during this time and could only piece together the some stories of his youth. Fleeing the political turmoil and anti-Semitism prevalent in Russia, his parents left some of their family behind and emigrated to Geneva in 1911 for a better life 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.

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“Very quickly I learned that, just as no two great wines are the same, no two cigars are either, even from the same location,” he once recalled.

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Returning to Switzerland around 1930, he took over his parents' shop. What had originally been a modest tobacco shop grew into a rich business during and after World War II. Davidoff benefited from his good relationships with the Cubans. They allowed him to take charge of their large cigar warehouse in Paris before the Germans invaded France, with the result that for a considerable time Davidoff was the only dealer able to supply Havana cigars.

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After the War, Neutral Switzerland became a haven for wealthy tobacco customers. Zino was particularly successful in marketing the Hoyo de Monterrey Châteaux Series of Cuban cigars 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.
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In 1970, Zino sold his small but highly successful tobacco shop in Geneva to the Max Oettinger Group. Zino stayed on as Davidoff’s ambassador until his death in 1994 at the age of 88. He was survived by his wife and daughter, who remained in Switzerland and by his siblings that had since moved to other parts of the world, mainly North America. Till his last moments, Zino an avid family man, sought out to find his lost family history back in what had been the Communist U.S.S.R. Unfortunately, many historical documents had been lost and so had his search. Not much information exists on their whereabouts, but through saved notes by Zino, it has been speculated that many had defected to North America in the early to mid 70's, some under new identities and family names.

Zino Davidoff will always be remembered as a bon vivant with a highly developed appreciation for the finer things in life. As a successful businessman remained true to himself and to his principles. Zino Davidoff believed in simplicity, in the complete enjoyment of life. People who knew Davidoff knew this. They came from all over the world to share his philosophy, to enjoy his finest, purest cigars. They understood what Zino Davidoff meant when he said: "Smoke less, but better and longer - make a cult of it, even a philosophy!"

Luxury Note: My father-in-law had the opportunity to meet Zino Davidoff in 1984 at the shop of Geneva. He was going to the shop every time he was visiting Geneve. One day, talking with Zino, he told him that he is sometimes enjoying smoking a Toscanelli cigar, you know, these cigars that Clint Eastwood was always chewing on in those old westerns. Surprisingly, Zino told him he likes them, too, so they smoked one together. We will never know if Zino really liked them, or he was simply very polite. My father-in-law always says that Zino was a real gentleman with a great sense of humour. He was treating all his customers equally...even if they were buying just a packet of cigarettes, or the rearest cigars.