                             THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Sunday, October 22, 1995               TAG: 9510240730
SECTION: FLAVOR                   PAGE: F1   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY JIM RAPER, SPECIAL TO FLAVOR
                                             LENGTH: Long  :  261 lines

THE RIGHT PUFF AGAINST ALL ODDS, THE CIGAR IS TAKING ON A NEW RESPECTABILITY AS AN ACCOMPANIMENT TO FINE FOOD AND DRINK.

MISCHIEF IS on the faces of the men and women scattered about the outdoor gallery of Sanderling Inn Resort and Conference Center in Duck, N.C.

It is a warm October evening. A woman arrives with her date, surveys the scene, and says with a smile that this will be a night for forbidden pleasure.

Reception tables are spread with fine foods - Beluga caviar, smoked Scottish salmon, Roquefort cheesecake, duck pate with pistachio crust. Two bartenders serve cognac cocktails and sparkling wine.

The men, who outnumber the women three to one, are wearing natty coats and neckties; many of the women are in long elegant dresses.

This could be a Prohibition speakeasy, but the pleasure of the evening will not be strong drink. It will be cigars.

No trend of the 1990s could be more of an anomaly than the comeback of cigars.

Health concerns and a youth culture that saw cigar smokers as ``fogeys with stogies'' helped to stomp the bottom out of the cigar market in the 1970s and '80s. Sales of cigars in the United States reached a high of 8 billion in 1970, but fell to about 2 billion by the early years of this decade.

Then, seemingly overnight, cigar smoking took on a respectability that had nothing to do with rumpled codgers or cheap cigars. Young professionals who were relentless in their pursuit of the good life discovered handmade Caribbean cigars.

Last year, nationwide sales of cigars rose 14 percent to 2.3 billion, and the tobacco industry is predicting the climb is far from over.

``It all has to do with taste,'' says D.E. ``Chad'' Chadbourn, a tobacco merchant from Hampton Roads who drove two hours to the Outer Banks for the Sanderling's seaside cigar soiree.

``These are sophisticated young people who tell the craftsman, `Make me your best wine or micro-brewed beer. Money is no object. Make me your best dinner with Kobi beef. Money is no object. Make me your best cigar. Money is no object.' ''

Jon Beckner, 30, a real estate broker from Kitty Hawk, agrees. He he has come to the Sanderling to indulge a passion for great cigars and great cognac and great food. ``But this is not an everyday thing,'' he adds. ``Moderation is the word. Things taken in moderation generally are OK.''

With Beckner is Kristen Hargrave, 29, a health professional from Kitty Hawk. She accepts a puff from the 4-dollar A. Fuente Gran Reserva he is smoking.

``It's not a gender thing for me,'' she says. She may be reluctant to promote smoking, but she understands why women would want to try a cigar. ``They shouldn't be afraid to do it just because it's stereotyped as a male thing.'' CIGAR-FRIENDLY

Upscale restaurants throughout the country have moved cautiously but steadily to take advantage of the growing popularity of fine cigars. They cannot afford to offend nonsmoking customers, who still vastly outnumber the puffers.

``But,'' Chadbourn says, ``these restaurants know that accommodating cigar smokers means more business. A cigar-friendly restaurant allows the cigar-smoking customer to treat dinner as a celebration. These customers linger longer and spend more because they have something nice to drink with the cigar after dinner.''

Some restaurants, such as the Lighthouse and Areo in Virginia Beach and the Town Point Club in Norfolk, have dedicated separate dining rooms to smokers. Others, such as Bobbywood and Open Wide in Norfolk, allow cigar smokers to light up in the restaurants' bars.

Other restaurants are riding the trend by throwing fixed-price, no-smokes-barred cigar dinners.

Cigar Aficionado, the slick, 3-year-old magazine that some credit with rehabilitating the image of cigars, reports that 1,500 cigar dinners were held in the United States last year.

Sandy Howe, Sanderling restaurant manager, began planning his dinner months ago with the resort's executive chef, Dennis Connell. They wanted a successful, first-class affair that might give cigar dinners a place on the Sanderling's calendar of regularly scheduled events.

They arranged co-sponsorships with Arturo Fuente, cigar makers of the Dominican Republic; Guenoc Winery of northern California; and the importers of Courvoisier Cognac.

Connell built his menu around game, an idiomatic smokiness and classic preparations. It was designed to be, as he said, ``a man's menu.''

In addition to the hors d'oeuvres of the reception, there would be dinner courses of grilled quail stuffed with foie gras, smoked pheasant consomme with mushrooms, and a mixed grill of Alaskan caribou tenderloins, Texas antelope ribeyes and Wyoming elk sausage.

Howe got the word out to some of his best customers and to other cigar-lovers he knew: For $85 apiece, guests would be treated to a three-pack of cigars and a guillotine-type tip cutter, to a sumptuous reception at which cigar smoking would be encouraged, and to a one-of-a-kind game and wine dinner after which port would be served and smoking again encouraged.

The 60-seat event sold out several weeks ahead. INTO THE DINING ROOM

The reception has been interrupted briefly by a rain shower, but the guests look happy as they are herded from the gallery to the private Captain's Dining Room in the Sanderling's restaurant.

Conversation at a table in the corner is, early in the evening, mostly about food and wine. Orville Magoon, the likeable coastal engineer and farmer who owns Guenoc winery, takes the floor to describe the big and oaky Langtry 1994 Meritage White and 1993 Genevieve Magoon Chardonnay Reserve that the group will drink with the early courses. Later, guests will get side-by-side glasses of Guenoc's Bordeaux-styled Langtry 1987 and 1990 Meritage Red, and, at meal's end, a glass of the winery's 1992 Vintage Port.

Jeff Snead, 27, a stockbroker from Washington, D.C., turns the topic at the corner table back to cigars. He says there is a ritual to the proper smoking of a cigar, not unlike the rituals of fine dining and wine drinking.

The tall and handsome Snead was a quarterback at the University of Richmond and is the son of the former Wake Forest University and Washington Redskins quarterback Norm Snead. The younger Snead has been invited to the dinner by his mother, Susie, a night supervisor at the Sanderling's restaurant.

Snead demonstrates with an A. Fuente Hemingway Classic that retails for about $2.50: ``Squeeze it and it should give, but then let it go and see how it comes back to its regular shape.

``This has a nice leaf wrapper. You don't feel any seeds or stems. This should be a good cigar.''

Snead is no fan of the traditional end cutters that are used to open the mouth end of fine, handmade cigars. He has his own plug cutter, an expensive-looking silver device that bores a hole in the mouth end. ``See, the hole is just the right size. When you clip it, it's hard not to cut off too much.''

There is a right way to light a cigar, as well, Snead tells his tablemates. It begins with a wooden match - ``it always should be wooden'' - and the first move is to hold the cigar away from the mouth and singe the end. This dries out the end so the cigar will light more easily and more evenly.

He lights up, draws and exhales. Cigar aficionados do not inhale the smoke. ``Aah, savor the aroma. And, aah, the aftertaste. Like a fine wine.''

Snead says he has never smoked cigarettes and implies that he resents being lumped with people who have the unfortunate addiction.

Across the table from Snead is Deborah Brooks, a nonsmoker who is owner of a food and wine market in Duck. She speaks up when the conversation turns to women who smoke cigars.

``I hope,'' she says, ``it's not that women are struggling so hard for equality that they take to smoking cigars, that they believe cigars mean equality.'' DESSERT AND A SURPRISE

Dessert arrives to another round of ``oohs'' and ``aahs'': A chocolate confection shaped like a cigar rests on a chocolate cup made to resemble an ash tray. The menu calls it ``Fantasy Chocolate Sculpture.''

Suddenly, in the center of the room, Jon Beckner, the real estate broker, is causing a commotion. ``Will you spend the rest of your life with me?'' he asks Kristen Hargrave.

Beckner had arranged for two engagement rings to be delivered on Hargrave's dessert plate. ``There are two rings so you can choose,'' he says.

She squeals and they kiss and she puts on both rings. Everyone in the room applauds. Beckner begins to improvise an ode comparing a woman's beauty to cigars, but soon runs out of words.

Later, wrapped in gray curls of smoke, Hargrave says she thinks her man picked ``a most romantic way'' to propose. Adds Beckner, ``I thought about when to do it, and this seemed to be the right time.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos

DREW WILSON/The Virginian-Pilot

D.E. Chadbourn of Emerson's Fine Tobacco in Norfolk lights up during

a cigar soiree at the Sanderling Inn Resort and Conference Center in

Duck, N.C.

Yale Nesson of Norfolk, president of the Cigar Club of Town Point,

shares a smoke with his wife, Sandra, at the Sanderling.

Graphics\ IT'S A PAIR GAME

Many cigar smokers are most likely to light up after a meal when

they are drinking coffee or an alcoholic beverage.

Cigars often are paired with brandy, cognac, red wine, port or

single-malt scotch. The tobacco is fermented, aged and blended in

processes parallel to those used in the making of fine wines and

liquors.

After a fine cigar is made by hand it is likely to be aged in a

cedar-lined vault. It will pick up a hint of the wood's flavor, just

as a wine or whiskey would gain flavor from an oak barrel.

Although the custom is to pair cigars with intensely flavored

liquors and full-bodied red wines such as cabernet sauvignon, there

are some aficionados who are promoting the match of mild cigars with

medium-bodied pinot noirs or even big, oaky and spicy white wines

such as a barrel-fermented sauvignon blanc.

UP IN SMOKE

Cigar dinners that are open to the public are held periodically

by South Hampton Roads restaurants, and D.E. ``Chad'' Chadbourn

ismost likely to have the scoop on when and where.

Chadbourn is a longtime tobacco merchant who owns Emerson's Fine

Tobacco shops in Norfolk, at Military Circle Center (461-6848) and

on Granby Street (624-1520).

Chadbourn was a cigar lover long before the recent spurt of

popularity. He has seen tobacco trends come and go, and is

philosophical about the cigar boom of the '90s. ``I figure it will

go on for three more years or so. Then we'll be left with the ones

who really are in love with the taste. In the '70s, people running

from cigarettes took up pipes and that lasted for a few years. But

cigars are easier to smoke than pipes.''

Some of Chadbourn's observations:

The typical convert to cigars in South Hampton Roads is a young

professional male who buys cigars by the handful rather than by the

box and smokes about three a week. This typical convert does not use

cigarettes: ``He is pleasure seeker, not a nicotine addict,''

Chadbourn says. ``How often do you see cigar smoker huddled outside

a building in the rain or cold nursing a habit?''

The number of women who buy cigars from his shops is ``quite

small.'' They are ``young, sophisticated and don't go crazy when

people look at them funny for smoking cigars.''

Cuban cigars set the standard for the world. However, the U.S.

does not allow their importation. Some people buy them in Canada or

another foreign country and bring them in secretly. ``But there are

a lot of counterfeit Cubans in circulation and some of the others

from the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Jamaica and Mexico are much

cheaper and quite good,'' Chadbourn says.

Premium Caribbean brands with high name recognition include

Davidoff, Upmann, Macanudo and Partagas. Cigars made by Avo Eviasian

(Dominican Republic) and Santa Rosa (Honduras) are among those

particularly popular in South Hampton Roads this year.

The prices of fine, handmade cigars sold locally start at about

$1.50 apiece, are most often between $2 and $5, and go up to about

$15.

THE TYPICAL CONVERT