Navin Dass loves the smell of tobacco in the morning. It’s 10 a.m. on a cold January Monday, and the owner of Cross Street Tobacco in Federal Hill, the granddaddy of Baltimore cigar shops, is puffing on a Macanudo Inspirado. The store has just opened, and at a time when many people are in their office cubicles, slogging through emails and on their second cup of coffee, a handful of stogie lovers file in and light up. For years before he bought the place in 2015, Dass was a customer. Listen to him describe the pleasures of a good cigar, and it’s clear—even through the cloud of fragrant smoke—why more and more people are indulging in them at retail stores, lounges, and private clubs across town.

“A cigar is a very intimate thing. When I draw from the cigar, I let it out through my nose,” he says of the practice called retrohaling, which he demonstrates with subtle ease. “That changes a cigar from being a Ford to a Bugatti. You taste the country, the earth.” Like almost all cigar smokers, he doesn’t inhale.

Cigar enthusiasts discuss the varieties of tobacco leaves used for wrappers, fillers, and binders the way wine buffs gush over grapes. Prices can vary as drastically as vintages of pinot noir. Dass sells sticks ranging from a few bucks to $64 for a Padron 59th anniversary reserve. Is it worth it? “At that price it’s a celebratory cigar,” he says. “So it depends what you’re celebrating.”

Almost everyone who enjoys a premium cigar (loosely defined as handmade, using only long leaf tobaccos) says what makes the pastime a passion—and one way to explain its recent uptick in popularity in Baltimore and beyond—has less to do with what you’re smoking than it does with the act of smoking itself. The camaraderie, they say, is key.

“I’m a truck driver. I deal with speeds of 75 miles per hour all day, so when I get out and light up a cigar, I can relax and leave everything behind,” says downtown resident Mike McCoy, a Cross Street regular. “There’s a very diverse, interesting group of men and women who come through here. You could be sitting next to a fireman, attorneys, anybody. It’s very welcoming. The first time I came in, a guy introduced me to some of the regulars. Next time I came back, they referenced me by my first name. I thought, ‘that’s special.’”

The origins of the cigar are hazy. According to a brief history published in Time magazine, a ceramic pot discovered in Guatemala that dates back to at least the 10th century depicts a Mayan puffing on tobacco leaves bound with string. The Mayans may also be responsible for the object’s name, the story says: their term for smoking, sikar, likely led to the Spanish cigarro. In the United States, cigars were nearly as common an accessory (for men) in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries as cell phones are today. Despite their perpetual presence between the lips of iconic figures such as George Burns, baseball legend Babe Ruth, and President John F. Kennedy (not to mention criminals like Al Capone), the practice fell out of favor as Americans became more health conscious. It wasn’t until a boom in the early 1990s that they reentered pop culture.

“A decade after being left for dead, the expensive foreign-made cigar is back,” The New York Times reported in 1995. “They are gaining [popularity], discovered by men and even a few women in their 20s and 30s. These new cigarophiles are puffing and twirling at more than a thousand dressy smoke-ins held around the country and are seeking out newly opened cigar bars and fine restaurants that welcome them. There, they say, brandishing a cigar is a statement of cool authority and elegance.”

Like all bubbles, the cigar one eventually burst, but in the ensuing years a hardcore group of smokers remained. Today, the industry is experiencing a rebirth, with thousands of smaller, boutique brands joining heavyweights like Padron, Rocky Patel, Ashton, and Romeo y Julieta in humidors everywhere. “Business has been going up fairly steadily in the last three or four years,” says David Giambelluca, manager of Mount Vernon Tobacco on West Read Street. “In the ’90s, there wasn’t enough product to meet the demand. That time it seemed much more fad-like. This time it seems more social.”

In 2011, the Quintessential Gentleman started The Office Lounge at The QG, a private cigar club in its Calvert Street building downtown, and in late 2014, Davidus Cigars opened in Little Italy. Both, like Cross Street Tobacco, not only sell cigars, but offer customers a comfortable venue in which to smoke them. All have leather chairs, televisions, intricate exhaust systems, and allow patrons to bring their own booze. “There’s certainly a trend in recent years of high-end lounges and clubs opening,” says David Savona, executive editor of Cigar Aficionado. “In the old days, a cigar shop was strictly a place to go in, buy a cigar, and leave. Nowadays, shops have evolved into more of a cigar lounge where people tend to meet their friends and linger.”

According to a report in the magazine, the United States imported 315 million premium cigars in 2015, an increase of 2.3 percent over 2014. The annual import numbers were below 300 million from 1999 to 2011, but made a comeback in 2012 when 304.7 million were shipped to the U.S. The numbers have stayed above 300 million since.

It’s probably not a coincidence that this resurgence has come at a time when our lives feel busier and more plugged-in than ever.

“When you light a cigar, you’re looking at spending anything from a half hour to more than an hour smoking it,” Savona says. “It can’t be hurried.”

As the elevator doors open to the third floor of The QG, the smell of tobacco is faint. It’s only when you walk around the corner, past the racks of smoking jackets, and enter the private club that the creamy, spicy, and sweet aromas fully materialize. “The flavor profile of a cigar can vary widely,” says Mitchell Liebeskind, The QG’s director of client services. “It’s similar to the way you drink. If you’re into gins, you want a Connecticut wrapper—they’re lighter, a little more floral. If you drink 18-year-old Scotch, you better get something much darker.”

The club has never been more popular. As of mid-January, just one of its 112 slots was available. For $300 up front and a $75 monthly fee, each member gets access to the lounge, with its comfy chairs, card table, three TVs, two Xboxes, wet bar, and fridge filled with mixers. Each smoker has their own humidified locker in which to store their cigars (and liquor if they’d like), and, of course, their own smoking jacket. The black, velvet coats are used mostly by the members of the after-work crowd who don’t want to go home smelling like smoke. The club also maintains a walk-in humidor with cigars for sale. It curates its selections as meticulously as a sommelier does a wine cellar, offering a variety of flavors and strengths.

“Everyone’s palate is different,” says Ramon Burris, The QG’s cigar brand ambassador. “Some people won’t touch a lighter cigar, they prefer something bolder, with notes of chocolate or cinnamon. Our clientele is very eclectic. We have people who are aficionados, but we also have the new, younger cigar smoker who wants to get into it and add it to their daily routine.”

Well-known brands, such as Arturo Fuente, coexist along smaller, boutique ones like the Boca Raton, Florida-based LH Premium Cigars in the retail humidor. Nicholas Syris, owner of LH Premium Cigars, hosted a tasting at the Baltimore club in January.

“Right now we are in the renaissance of cigars,” says Syris, who is also the company’s master blender. He uses Ecuadorian wrappers and filler from Peru, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and Brazil. “There are thousands of brands. If you don’t have a good cigar, you’re not going to get very far in this market. Clubs like this, where you have your man cave away from home, are great places to smoke. Where else can you have a bricklayer and a physicist sit down and immediately have common ground?”

While the majority of cigar smokers are men, more and more women are enjoying the pleasures of a nice stogie, as well. Lori Harris felt the allure from the moment she started smoking at The QG’s club, which she joined in December. She’s one of the only female members, and aside from the sticks themselves, loves buying accessories such as  lighters, cutters, and cases. “The fact that it takes a long time to smoke a cigar inherently makes it a social activity,” she says. “The guys here are great. It’s a lounge, not a locker room. The nice thing about it is you can socialize the way you feel comfortable. There’s no pressure on any front.”

That come-one, come-all vibe—The QG even allows nonmembers to buy a day pass by purchasing $30 of cigars—stands in stark contrast to the Elk Room, the exclusive new Harbor East speakeasy and cigar club that opened late last year and prefers to shroud itself in a smoky haze of secrecy. The Atlas Restaurant Group, which owns it (along with Bygone, a new restaurant in the Four Seasons Hotel that has an outdoor patio for cigar smoking), declined to comment on it, saying only that it is a “private, members-only club.”

In February, The Other Corner Charcuterie Bar owner Bernard Dehaene announced he was transforming his Hampden establishment into the Elmwood Social Room, a new members-only martini and cigar club. While the private clubs certainly meet the needs of one clientele, Baltimore has no shortage of friendly, membership-free places to puff. Navin Dass felt that warmth when he first discovered Cross Street Tobacco, and he strives to maintain it today.

“When you walk in that door, it doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re from in life,” he says. “Everybody in here is on an even playing field. There are people from all walks of life that become friends because they met here; if they had met somewhere else they would have never become friends because they look different, they talk different, they walk different, they come from different backgrounds. But cigars really bring people together.”

Rodney Ferebee nods in agreement. A city firefighter, his overnight shift has just ended. At a time when most people have the brunt of their day ahead of them, he pours a small shot of whiskey, takes a pull off his cigar, and sits back in his armchair, content as can be. Not a bad way to end a day.

A grittier but gemlike offshoot of the upscale restaurant Corner BYOB
in Hampden, The Other Corner Charcuterie Bar is a near-perfect exemplar
of what a neighborhood bar should be. Slipping into its quirkily rustic
environs one rainy November night (it opened in September), I
immediately felt giddy, as if I’d found the door into a past life or
another country—rural France, maybe, or the rec room of a friend’s
coolest parents, circa 1954. Various cured meats and farm implements
hang over the 14-seat hardwood bar. Tabletops perch on oak barrels
against the far wall, whose crenelated white bricks give the tiny room a
grotto-like feel. A clutch of herbs hangs in a space between the
rafters, beyond which an acid yellow-lit wall boasts a graffito of a
spidery two-faced monkey—a jarring contrast that fittingly sums up the
mix of funk and roughhewn charm. When the
glamorous-as-a-’40s-movie-poster waitress pressed the daily $5 cocktail
into my hands—a hot concoction of artisanal liqueurs and small-batch
rum—I knew I’d died and gone to Hampden heaven.

The place is the
brainchild of BYOB co-owner Bernard Dehaene, whose Belgian roots may be
responsible for the European vibe. A passageway connects the restaurant
to the new bar, so that while BYOB patrons can still bring their own
libations, they can now also order them from the Charcuterie. Meanwhile,
chef Andrew Cole executes a bar menu as funky, charming, and surprising
as the surroundings. Most of the offerings are small plates, reasonably
priced around $7, with one nightly dinner offering for $20, which
includes appetizer, entree, and a glass of wine or beer. Sounds ordinary
enough—the small-plate idea is standard issue—but what plates! At BYOB,
Dehaene is famous for serving up exotic game, everything from wild boar
to yak, and the Charcuterie navigates between beautifully prepared
straight-ahead bistro items (beer-steamed mussels enriched with smoked
bacon and leeks, addictive duck-fat-fried fingerling potatoes, garlicky
escargot), and more adventurous “snacks” like seared frog legs, an
earthy casserole of blood sausage in tomato-garlic sauce, roasted veal
marrow bone, and a mustard-and-crumb-coated pork foot.

That last
is a fine example of the kitchen’s straightforward but magical way with
“parts.” It’s a simple fried pork foot, but as the ethereal breadcrumb
coating yields to the crispy skin and shards of unctuous meat beneath,
you realize it’s addictive and well worth getting a little brutish with
the bones. The housemade “accoutrements” that grace the plate are an
astonishingly delicious array of goodies: slivers of shallot pickled
with curry, jewel-like dabs of port-wine jelly and Forelle pear jam, and
translucent rounds of spicy pickled carrot.

A generously
portioned trio of the eponymous charcuterie—among the choices are hearty
chorizo, creamy mortadella, and Venetian sopressata—comes similarly
accoutred. Accompanied by a crusty baguette and a glass of, say, Saint
Cosme Côtes du Rhône from the bar’s small but reasonably priced
selection of wines, it may be the best $13 meal in town. There are also a
half-dozen artisanal cheeses from near and far to choose from, and
bowls of herb-marinated olives to be had. And there’s a
cognac-chicken-liver mousse that has been flambéed and then swirled into
satiny smoothness with heavy cream. Served with a buttery hunk of
brioche, it is as richly evocative of the French countryside as anything
in Baltimore. If you’re in the mood for a slightly more austere repast,
the house cold-smoked trout with toasted raisin-pumpernickel bread is
tangy and divine.

Of course, it would be a shame to dine here
without sampling one of Charcuterie’s handcrafted cocktails, which hold
equal billing with the food. Using mostly boutique, small-batch liquors,
the bartenders whip up classics like sazaracs and sidecars burnished
with some small fillip of difference: an absinthe-washed glass for the
former, a splash of Elixir Combier in the latter. The daily cocktail
usually features more wildly inventive recipes, but to taste the
difference a craft-distilled liquor can make, a simple Negroni will do.

I
admit that, save for a bite of the Thursday night leg of lamb from a
friend’s plate (delicious), I’ve yet to sample a full dinner at The
Other Corner. (I’ve been too busy making my way through the irresistible
small stuff.) But I’m dreaming of the textural refinements Andrew Cole
might work on the Wednesday night pasta or what rare seasonings he
applies to steak on Saturdays. Rest assured it won’t take me very long
to go back and find out.