ROANOKE TIMES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, May 24, 1994                   TAG: 9405240075
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long


CIGARS ALL AROUND

GOD must love smokers. He let them sample heaven Saturday night.

Some 55 of them drank imported wines, ate a seven-course dinner and smoked hand-made cigars for hours and hours on end. And no one scolded them once.

It was Roanoke's First Annual Black Tie Smoker - sponsored by Milan Brothers, the downtown tobacco shop.

And so sweet did it prove, so salubrious, so deliciously, gloriously unsanctimonious that by evening's end there was talk of holding another one - not next year, but in October.

The idea behind the smoker, said Milan Brothers' new owner, Don Roy, who organized the event, was to give the growing ranks of cigar smokers ``a little recognition.''

Roy bought the downtown Roanoke store from the Milan family in January. ``Cigar smoking has enjoyed a tremendous resurgence in the '90s,'' said Roy, who has held smokers previously in Florida, where he ran a tobacco shop for several years. ``It's become a kind of an `in' thing, a chic thing to do, smoke a cigar.''

And yet, these are trying times for the lover of cigars.

Even cigarette smokers, after all, though hunted and haunted, can still find some space in the world-at-large to call their own. A nook in a restaurant. A cranny at the office. A hole in the blanket of condemnation through which to sneak a couple of furtive puffs.

One cannot be furtive when smoking a cigar.

There is the size, for one thing - far too large to be cupped discreetly in the hand.

There is the sheer, slow-burning, cloud-building monumentality of the thing. It can take an hour or more to smoke a large cigar.

And in the course of an hour, anyone in the vicinity of a burning cigar is certain - perhaps sooner rather than later - to begin to notice the, uh, stench.

Of course, nowadays it seldom gets that far.

``You don't even have to light it up,'' fumed Elaine Milan Cronk, daughter of Joe Milan himself - and a woman who enjoys a good cigar (although nowadays, she generally enjoys it outside). ``You just take it out of the wrapper in a restaurant, and people yell at you. It's amazing.''

``At one time you could buy a pack of domestic cigars and smoke them anywhere you wanted to,'' explained Roy. ``You can't do that anymore. People will stone you.''

So now, instead, a smoker will buy a few fine cigars - $7 and up for one good imported cigar is not uncommon - and pick their times, Roy said.

Saturday night was definitely one of those times.

From the opening cocktail hour upstairs through the long, lazy meal down below, the air roiled with rich Caribbean smoke. Almost every hand held a cigar. A Don Diego, a Macanudo, a Santa Damiana, perhaps. A Partagas, a Por Larranaga. Cigars were provided, endlessly, by Milan Brothers. At the end of the evening, Roy even passed out bags of samples to take home.

For the tobacconist, a black-tie smoker is good advertising.

For a smoker, it's a joy.

Or, as Cronk said, puffing yet another cigar, ``I think I have died and gone to heaven.''

Whatever a cigar smoker's heaven consists of, it must resemble the Shenandoah Club last Saturday night. A place where the cigars are plentiful, and nobody complains about the smell. Where a jazz band plays softly in the background, as the smiling help moves lightly through the room with bottles of imported wine and yet another installment in a seven-course meal. Flounder Marguerite. Sorbet with Pineapple Intermezzo. Beef Wellington, Italian spinach broth, Duchess potatoes. Chilled Lemon Grand Marnier Souffle.

And, afterwards, a glass of Courvoisier.

Did we mention the admission fee for heaven was 75 bucks?

Did we note the composition of heaven was overwhelmingly white, male and often employed in such remunerative fields as the law, real estate, banking and medicine?

Did we point out that some of the men had pointedly neglected to bring their wives? That men outnumbered women at the smoker approximately 10 to one?

We have now.

Though one could read too much into all that.

``This is not a male thing, per se,'' insisted Bruce Michie of Roanoke, who is male.

``I think it would be nice if there were more females here,'' added Chris Perry, who is young.

Others conceded there was an element of male bonding at work at the smoker - if only for self-defense.

For a smoker, it's a hard world out there.

``It's not just smoking,'' added Joe Slattery, owner of the London Underground Pub in Blacksburg. ``It's what you're eating. It's what you're drinking. Name me one right that's guaranteed under the constitution that's not under attack.''

In the company of other cigar smokers, at least, ``You don't have to be what is popularly known as `politically correct,''' Michie said.

``We're political atheists,'' explained Paul Rossi of Blacksburg, who works at Virginia Tech.

Smoking is more or less illegal now in Blacksburg, Rossi said. ``The town has placed ashtrays at the city limits.''

There were plenty of ashtrays at the Shenandoah Club on Saturday night.

There was even one small victory for smokers.

Dennis Cronk, ex-smoker and husband of Elaine Milan Cronk - a veteran cigar smoker who is not allowed to smoke in the house - attended Saturday's event with his wife.

Within 20 minutes, he had a cigar in his hand.

``The first cigar I ever smoked in my life,'' Cronk verified. ``And I'm enjoying it.''

So did they all.



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