Being Frank
Frank Sinatra’s brush with cigars came largely posthumously, though he always had a love for tobacco.
Just as they had earlier approached actor George hamilton to develop a rangeof cigars, hamilton’s reserve, in his name, the same people got in touch with the estate of Frank sinatra to propose a licensing deal for his personal line.
Having been given the go-ahead, southern Wine & spirits then hired Florida boutique cigar maker Felipe Gregorio to put together a blend. The licensing arrangement reportedly required $30 to be paid to the Sinatra family on the sale of every single box, based on cigars that would retail for over $15 per stick.
When asked to produce a cigar bearing the Sinatra name, Gregorio was honoured. “What led me to the dominican republic was none other than Frank Sinatra. I realized it represented a challenge to produce a cigar so outstanding that it could live up to the Sinatra name,” he says.
The Sinatra limited edition line is manufactured by combining superbly aged dominican and Cuban seed tobaccos with a superior Connecticut wrapper tobacco. It’s made entirely by hand in a Dominican Republic factory, and contains the subtle flavours and rich aromas typical of an exceptional cigar.
“Then I was doubly honoured. Not only was I to make the cigar, but Sinatra insisted that the box read Sinatra by Felipe Gregorio. Being half-Italian, this gesture meant the world to me. They had only one request that the cigar be made by me in the Dominican Republic.
“I explained to them that i had no factory there and they simply told me to build one. So the Sinatra Cigar was born.” Sinatra was no stranger to a cigar, having discovered Cuban cigars when performing At Havana’s Hotel Nacional, the city’s grand dame of a venue, in the ‘Forties and ‘Fifties, though he is better known for his fondness of cigarettes and would smoke many packs a day.
He took up smoking in his early teens. years later, before going on stage, Sinatra would have a cup of hot tea with lemon juice and a cigarette. all of his fellow rat Packers smoked; indeed, Sammy Davis Jr. consumed so many cigarettes that they nicknamed him “smokey”. But the habit did have an effect on Sinatra professionally, and he admitted that he couldn’t sustain long notes later on in his career because of damage to his lungs.
“drink, drink, drink. smoke, smoke, smoke. shmuck, shmuck, shmuck!” he said, chastising himself for the excesses that made his voice raspy during the taping of a‘sixties TV special. But there was a reason why this recording issue did not become a long-term problem, according to his biographer, Anthony Summers, who wrote: ”One of the strange anomalies is that a man, who not only drank so much but smoked so much—those untipped Camel cigarettes—for years and years and years, was still able to put out such a wonderful voice over such a long period.
“We learned that he went off the booze and off the cigarettes for a period before he made an album.”