Henry Clay is a brand of cigars

Cigar

A cigar is a tightly-rolled bundle of dried and fermented tobacco that is ignited so that its smoke may be drawn into the mouth. Cigar tobacco is grown in significant quantities in Brazil, Cameroon, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Indonesia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Philippines, and the Eastern...

 named after early American politician Henry Clay

Henry Clay

Henry Clay, Sr. , was a lawyer, politician and skilled orator who represented Kentucky separately in both the Senate and in the House of Representatives...

 (1777-1852). The cigars are currently manufactured in the Dominican Republic.

History

The Henry Clay brand was first created in the 1840s by the Cuban tobacco magnate Spanish emigrant Julian Alvarez. The name was proposed by Alvarez when he was in the service of an employer and he maintained it once he was in business for himself.

The Cuban business interest of Alvarez eventually was transferred to a British company named Henry Clay and Bock & Co. Ltd. which was founded in 1888. Henry Clay and Bock & Co. Ltd. would become a component of the Tobacco Trust

Trust (19th century)

A special trust or business trust is a business entity formed with intent to monopolize business, to restrain trade, or to fix prices. Trusts gained economic power in the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some, but not all, were organized as trusts in the legal sense...

 that along with other trusts was an object of the anti-trust legislation of the United States.

The brand is currently in the possession of the Spanish company Altadis

Altadis

Altadis is a multinational purveyor and manufacturer of cigarettes, tobacco and cigars. Altadis was formed via a 1999 merger between Tabacalera, the former Spanish tobacco monopoly and SEITA, the former French tobacco monopoly...

.

In popular culture

• The brand is mentioned in James Joyce
  James Joyce
  James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
  
  's 1922 novel Ulysses: "Long John Fanning made no way for them. He removed his large Henry Clay decisively and his large fierce eyes scowled intelligently over all their faces."
• Reference is made to Henry Clay as a London grocer's "finest cigar" in the 1929 Alfred Hitchcock
  Alfred Hitchcock
  Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
  
   film Blackmail
  Blackmail (1929 film)
  Blackmail is a 1929 British thriller drama film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Anny Ondra, John Longden, and Cyril Ritchard, and featuring Donald Calthrop, Sara Allgood and Charles Paton. The film is based on the play Blackmail by Charles Bennett, as adapted by Hitchcock, with dialogue by...
  
  .
• Rudyard Kipling mused, "There's calm in a Henry Clay," in his 1886 poem The Betrothed
  The Betrothed (Kipling poem)
  The Betrothed is a poem by Rudyard Kipling, first published in book form in Departmental Ditties .It is a tongue-in-cheek work by the young bachelor Kipling, who affected a very worldly-wise stance. In it, he takes as his epigraph the report of evidence in a breach of promise case, "You must choose...
  
  .
• Mentioned in "Die matrosen tango" from Bertolt Brechts 1929 play "Happy end"
• Mentioned in Aleister Crowley's "Absinthe: The Green Goddess" (1918)

External links

• Home page for the brand at Altadis