Dupont Have Propelled Cigar-Tech To A New Level

Source from:  British GQ 08/10/2018

Setting fire to a cigar is one of those junctions where tradition meets technology. Sticking a bundle of leaves in your mouth, igniting them and enjoying the flavours as they waltz, foxtrot, rumba or otherwise dance across your palate, is a low-tech, analogue human activity that the indigenous people of the Americas enjoyed long before Columbus turned up and informed them they had just joined the Spanish Empire. And after a rocky start – one early cigar smoker was locked up by the Inquisition because his neighbours thought the smoke coming from his nose and mouth was the work of Satan – it caught on over here and the Cuban leaf has been in demand ever since.

If one wants to look for a true European contribution to the culture of tobacco it is in the ignition of the stuff, as we have moved from the primitive business of flints and kindling, via tapers, spills and matches to pocket lighters.

A lighter snob since I was introduced to Dupont almost 30 years ago by the inimitable Edward Sahakian of Davidoff, I have taken a keen interest in the marque. For the cigar lover, it occupies more or less the same hallowed space that Patek Philippe does for the watch obsessive. The feel, the weight, the patina it takes on with time, the chime as the lid is flicked open, sounding like a miniature church bell pealing out over a winter landscape: it is chic and talks to my inner pyrotechnician.

The Dupont family had tried its hand at most things, from champagne to photography, before settling on lighters: and in 1952 it launched a gas lighter with the miracle of the adjustable flame. It was the golden age of tobacco and advertising sold the elegance (“The best-dressed flame in the world”) and the precision (“Built like a chronometer, designed like a jewel”). Like a Cartier Tank watch or a Charvet shirt, a Dupont lighter was a talismanic symbol of what it was to be elegant, stylish and French.

Now, in a stroke of Archimedean genius, Dupont has propelled cigar-tech to a new level: combining the gentle caresses of the traditional yellow flame and the searing, annealing heat of the blue flame in a single pocket lighter.

The yellow flame is the smoking-room staple, noiseless and easy on the eye. By contrast, using a blue flame indoors is as elegant as wearing rubber boots and a cagoule: the roar as the geometrically correct shard of heat surges from the end of the lighter is disruptive; those of a nervous disposition scream in terror; pets cower under furniture; and so on.

However, if you have attempted to light a cigar in anything stronger than a draught you will know the value of the blue flame: cigars take time to combust and during the application of flame to leaf you are vulnerable to the slightest change in wind direction, rather like a yachtsman preparing for an Atlantic crossing. Often have I regretted not consulting the Met Office before setting out for the day. The only solution has been to carry a brace of lighters, like some sort of Wild West gunslinger.

These are genuine concerns that assail cigar lovers. Happily, Dupont was listening and in 2016, after four years’ R&D, it launched its “Complication”, the tourbillon minute repeater perpetual calendar chronograph of lighters. The official communiqué talked of unifying in one object “fine watchmaking, jewellery and the art of fire”. With a 200-part skeleton mechanism visible through a crystal case secured by a combination lock and executed in palladium and gold it showcased the revolutionary flame-switching technology, albeit at a price: around £35,000 (and add another £50,000 or so if you fancy covering it in diamonds).

It is a concept so radical that there are few parallels in any other field of human endeavour, except perhaps the Q Branch of the more fanciful Bond films; it is like being able to transform a pair of jeans and a T-shirt into a dinner jacket while you are wearing them. Flick open the lid, activate the side roller and the yellow flame is released, nudge the roller up and the yellow flame turns blue before your eyes.

Now, with the invention of the ST Dupont Ligne 2, this technology is within reach of the man who doesn’t mind dropping the thick end of £1,000 on a lighter... after all, some cigars now cost hundreds a stick. It is what is called progress. Back in the days of Columbus this sort of trick would have wound up getting you burnt at the stake for witchcraft... for which, of course, I would suggest a Dupont blue flame. Bonfires are notoriously tricky to get going.  Enditem