Marvin Shanken, Founder of Cigar Aficionado, Dies at 83

Marvin R. Shanken, the founder of M. Shanken Communications and of Cigar Aficionado, died on October 29, 2026. He was 83. Wine Spectator and Cigar Aficionado, both published by his company, announced his death on Thursday.

Shanken was born on October 4, 1943, in New Haven, Connecticut. After a few years in investment banking, he discovered wine while researching a vineyard deal and changed careers. In 1972 he bought Impact, a small trade newsletter for the alcohol industry, and at the end of that decade he took over The Wine Spectator, a free newspaper from San Diego that he turned into a glossy magazine.

He had smoked cigars since college and wrote about them in Wine Spectator. In 1992, against the advice of his own management team, he launched Cigar Aficionado, a lifestyle magazine for cigar smokers. Its arrival is widely tied to the cigar boom of the 1990s, when sales took off. The first issue told the story of Cohiba and carried the first public mention of the Cuban brand Trinidad. A year later, in 1993, he held the first Big Smoke, the magazine’s gathering for cigar lovers.

His company also publishes Whisky Advocate, Market Watch, Shanken News Daily and Impact. With golfer Ernie Els, he co-founded Els for Autism in 2009.

For anyone who reads about cigars, in English or in Spanish, much of the way we talk about them today, in tasting notes, ratings and long features about the families behind the leaf, traces back to the magazine he started.