 
SanAntonio Cigar Stroll By Mark Bernardo Photos By Jeff Bolton
The home of the Alamo, the Spurs, and the Riverwalk offers a host of cigar-friendly haunts with a distinct South Texas flair.
It’s also a pretty welcoming town for cigar smokers. Though a new indoor smoking law did go into effect at the beginning of this year, prohibiting smoking in many restaurants and bars, it is not nearly as draconian as those in New York or California. Restaurants - notably steakhouses like Morton’s which tend to attract a cigar-appreciative clientele - are still allowed to maintain cigar lounges, provided they’re separate from the dining area. Bars may allow smoking depending on the percentage of food revenue. Tobacco retailers are completely immune from the regulations - good news for the city’s tobacconists, particularly the first family of the San Antonio cigar trade, the Rumbos.
Much like a dedicated casino gambler cannot “do” Atlantic City without coming across a destination that bears the name Trump, cigar enthusiasts visiting San Antonio will inevitably come into contact in some way with the Rumbo family. Ralph Rumbo, a living legend known to his customers and contemporaries in the cigar business simply as “the Colonel” is the pipe-smoking patriarch of the clan. After serving 20 years as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force, Rumbo dabbled in a number of career endeavors after his retirement from the military in 1975 - owner of a cab company, home builder, and high school science teacher, among them - before purchasing, with his wife Sylvia, the original Humidor store at on San Pedro Avenue in 1982. Today, the business has expanded to five stores in the San Antonio metropolitan area, and the next generation of Rumbos has embraced it. Ralph and Sylvia’s two sons and their wives have all become involved in the growing cigar-retailing empire.
Mark Rumbo operates the store in the historic Menger Hotel. His wife Stacey works at the original San Pedro location, side by side with her in-laws, the Colonel and Sylvia (occasionally, and good-naturedly, referred to by Ralph as “the General”). Keith Rumbo and his wife Tiffany have struck out on their own, spinning off their own stores, called Club Humidor, with two locations in largely affluent areas of San Antonio. Of the five locations, I paid visits to two, finding two distinctly different experiences.
Echoing the décor and accouterments of its historic host hotel, The Humidor incorporates touches of Texas culture, including trophy-like mini-busts of horse and deer heads and carved sculptures of football players. The walk-in humidor is modest in size, but stocked with an array of popular brands - Fuente, Padron, and Gurkha are the best sellers - that would surely not disappoint most cigar-loving visitors. The accessories include attractive chess sets, high-end shaving accessories, top-quality knives by Benchmade, and flasks by Colibri. The influence of Colonel Rumbo is also evident, with a selection of pipes and pipe tobaccos, including regional-themed, house blend favorites like Southern Belle, Cherokee Firewater, Tawny Port, and of course, the Colonel’s Blend.
Jose Martinez, the sales associate minding the shop during my visit, admits that business has slowed somewhat since 1996, though he attributes it less to the post-cigar boom dip than to general economic factors, namely the slowdown in convention business the city has experienced since then. There is still the occasional event-driven spike in sales, though. “They had the [NCAA Basketball] Final Four at the AlamoDome at the beginning of the year,” he recalls, “and that was a real boost.” Presumably, fingers are crossed that the hometown Spurs, NBA Champs in 2003, will be lighting up victory cigars again this June.
The Humidor, Menger Hotel at Alamo Plaza, 204-J Alamo Plaza, San Antonio, Texas; The Humidor, 7074 San Pedro Avenue, San Antonio, Texas, (210) 824-1209.
Ensconced in a busy corner of the Rivercenter, the Latin Gold Cigar Company has been in business eight years. In the store’s front window is a bench and rolling table where the in-house Dominican cigar rollers ply their trade six days out of every week for the enjoyment and education of Latin Gold’s clientele - largely doctors, lawyers and other visiting professionals, according to the store’s general manager, John Pacheco. The mall’s proximity to the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, as well as the Riverwalk’s high-end hotels, brings in a brisk tourist trade to the little shop, and the cigars made and sold there offer a range of choices to everyone from the novice or casual cigar smoker to the seasoned connoisseur. Made chiefly with Dominican filler, Latin Gold hand-rolled cigars are available in just about every size and shape and several wrapper styles, including Cameroon and candela. There are also flavored cigars offered, in Rum, Vanilla, Coffee Mocha, Cherry, Bourbon, and many others. The flavoring of the tobacco leaves is an entirely in-house operation, and the flavors extend to the house pipe tobacco blends, offered in such styles as chocolate cream, apple, peach, and buttered rum. While the flavoring is done behind the scenes in the store’s basement, the cigar rolling has proven to be a worthwhile drawing card for curious shoppers. “We get good spectator traffic,” Pacheco confirms.
Latin Gold Cigar Factory, RiverCenter Mall, 849 East Commerce Street, Suite 353, San Antonio, Texas, (210) 227-1174.
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Located right down the street from the Alamo, the Menger Hotel is a true Texas landmark, constructed in 1859 on the site of Texas’s first brewery. Built under the supervision of owner William A. Menger and architect John Fries, it is actually the oldest continually operating hotel west of the Mississippi - and is widely rumored to be haunted. It has housed such historical figures as Sam Houston, Generals Lee and Grant, Presidents McKinley, Taft, and Eisenhower, Mae West, Babe Ruth, and most famously, Teddy Roosevelt, who, legend holds, recruited his Rough Riders right there in the hotel’s bar. The Humidor, managed by Mark Rumbo, was opened fairly recently, in February 1996, which is almost a shame; presumably Grant and Ruth, among others, would have appreciated the cigar selection there in bygone days.
Not far from Alamo Plaza, San Antonio’s famed Riverwalk winds through the city’s center, alongside the San Antonio River, shaded by oaks, cypresses, and willows, and bordered by gardens of ornamental plants. Boats packed with tourists sail by, observed by patrons of the numerous restaurants, hotels, bars, and shops, including the Rivercenter Mall, one of the city’s major shopping centers. Straddling the banks of the river, the Mall offers all the amenities one has come to expect from a modern-day retail Mecca - Gap, Victoria’s Secret, Express, a food court, a comedy club and an Imax theater - with one novel addition: a cigar shop where all the cigars are hand-rolled on the premises.