Perhaps it was some early snake oil salesman who helped tobacco use to get established in Europe at that time. Shortly after tobacco arrived back in Europe claims about its ability to cure just about everything began to appear and even back then people understood the Number 1 Law of Medicines - if it tastes bad then it must be good for you.

Exactly who began the process to make tobacco more palatable has been lost in the mists of time but someone had the bright idea of applying the same techniques to growing tobacco as is used to grow grapes and gradually, as tobacco evolved, that terrible taste disappeared.

Over the years tobacco use and the production of cigars soared both in Europe and in the United States and some reports suggest that the demand for cigars was so great in the United States that just about every state had at least one cigar factory. Cigar smoking reached its peak in the early 1900s and then began to decline but these days ... perhaps thanks to the Internet ... cigar smoking is making a comeback although I doubt that we will ever see those heady days when every state had its own source of supply.