Cigar Houses
Davidoff: From a Geneva Shop to Dominican Elegance
Zino Davidoff turned a small Geneva tobacco shop into a byword for luxury. He made cigars in Cuba, broke with the island, and found a new home in the Dominican Republic.
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There are cigar brands and there are luxury brands. Davidoff is one of the few that is both at once, and it all began with a man selling tobacco from behind a counter.
From Kyiv to Geneva
Zino Davidoff was born in 1906 near Kyiv, in what was then the Russian Empire. His father ran a small tobacco business. In 1911, fleeing the persecution of Jews, the family settled in Geneva, Switzerland, and opened a tobacco shop there.
In 1924, still young, Zino crossed the Atlantic to learn the trade in Argentina, Brazil and Cuba. What he saw in the Cuban fields and factories shaped the rest of his life.
The Davidoff Havanas
In the late 1960s, the Cuban state monopoly offered to make cigars under his name. The first Davidoff Havanas came out around 1968 and 1969, with vitolas named after great wines, such as the Château series.
In 1970 the Swiss company Oettinger, of Basel, bought the business. Zino stayed on as its ambassador and remained the face of the brand.
The break with Cuba
In the late 1980s the relationship with Cuba broke down over disagreements about quality. In 1989 Zino publicly burned thousands of Havanas he felt fell short of his standard, a gesture still remembered today. The exact dates of the break range from 1989 to 1991 depending on the source.
The Dominican Republic
Davidoff found its new home in Santiago, Dominican Republic, with master tobacco man Hendrik “Henke” Kelner and his company, Tabadom. Since the early 1990s every Davidoff cigar has been made there.
Zino died in Geneva in January 1994. The house kept growing with lines like Millennium, Winston Churchill and, later, cigars with tobacco from Nicaragua and other countries.
Why it matters
Davidoff taught the world that a cigar could be sold as a luxury object without losing the craft. And its move from Cuba to the Dominican Republic helped prove that excellence did not depend on a single island.
Several dates in the Davidoff story change depending on the source. We use the most cited ones.