More than What’s in the Humidor

Elite Cigar & Smoke – Rochester, NY

There is a difference between walking into a cigar shop looking for something to smoke and walking into one after spending months thinking, writing, talking, and probably overthinking cigars.

I’ve worked in the Rochester area for years and have visited Elite Cigar & Smoke before. This wasn’t some blind discovery tucked into a business trip. But it was my first visit since founding The Evening Draw, and that meant I was walking through the same doors with a decidedly different lens.

I was in the area on business, knew Elite was there, knew what they offered, and made my way over. You enter through the larger retail glass shop, which isn’t particularly my cup of tea, but that didn’t matter. I was greeted, welcomed, and pointed toward exactly where I wanted to be.

The humidor.

And that’s where this visit really began.

Through the Door

Calling Elite’s humidor a walk-in doesn’t quite tell the story.

It’s a two-room affair, with multiple shelves running vertically along the exterior walls and inventory seemingly everywhere without ever feeling like too much. There are some displays occupying the center space, and the cash wrap sits in the second room, which—at least from my admittedly less-than-scientific observation—seemed to be where more of the boutique offerings lived.

The cigars are generally organized by brand. It isn’t some obsessively alphabetical library catalog, but it doesn’t need to be. I had no trouble navigating it, and more importantly, I found myself wanting to look through all of it.

The usual suspects were well represented: Rocky Patel, Alec Bradley, My Father, Padrón, Perdomo, Montecristo, AJ Fernandez, Ashton and plenty more.

Then came the boutiques.

Rojas. Black Label Trading Company. And enough others that the humidor rewards somebody willing to actually browse rather than march directly toward the same box they’ve bought twenty times before.

There were only a slim handful of labels I specifically looked for and couldn’t find, and those were decidedly boutique asks. Expecting every brick-and-mortar retailer to carry every brand under the sun isn’t reasonable. Elite’s selection was substantially larger than what I have available locally, and I had no concerns about finding something I hadn’t smoked before.

The evidence eventually came back to the hotel with me: a San Cristobal Golden Hour, West Tampa Circle of Life and La Aroma de Cuba Passion, along with a Maceda I absolutely didn’t expect to find.

I had originally been looking for cigars to take to an upcoming event.
Now I may buy something else for that purpose.

Some cigars deserve more than dying on a golf course.

Take a Seat

For this visit, I chose a Rojas Unfinished Business.

The price caught my attention, Rojas already had my interest, and I have another Unfinished Business waiting in the Daniel Marshall for a future focused review. This wasn’t that review. It was simply the cigar I wanted to smoke that afternoon.

And it was very good.

It stayed comfortably in the Rojas lane, changed several times along the way, and was thoroughly enjoyable. We’ll eventually give it the attention it deserves.

The lounge itself is clean, comfortable and intentionally conversational.

The best way I can describe the seating arrangement is a collection of four-packs: comfortable chairs and couches grouped together rather than a room full of seats pointed uniformly toward televisions. I settled into a swivel club chair with a table and ashtray in front of me. There are both table and standing ashtrays throughout, several televisions, and a back table stocked with communal cutters and lighters for those who didn’t bring their own.

Coffee and non-alcoholic beverages appeared to be available as well, though I didn’t partake.

There is room for more than 20 people without the furniture feeling stacked on top of itself. More importantly, the layout invites conversation.

Outdoor smoking appeared to be more transitional—bring a chair outside when Rochester weather cooperates—rather than a purpose-built patio. Given the climate, that’s perfectly understandable.

Inside, the air was remarkably good during my visit.

There were only a handful of smokers, so I’m not going to pretend I stress-tested the ventilation system on a packed Saturday night. I noticed several air scrubbers and exhausts but no obvious source of dedicated fresh-air intake. I couldn’t tell you exactly what equipment was running.

I can tell you what I experienced.

No visible haze. No stale, heavy feeling. No oppressive wall of cigar smoke. Nothing about the room made me want to finish my cigar somewhere else.

It was quiet, too. I don’t remember any background music, probably because I was too engaged in conversation to notice it. At one point another patron turned on one of the televisions, which leads me to believe there wasn’t much competing for your attention in the first place.

That’s not a bad thing.

A cigar lounge should probably encourage you to talk to the people sitting in it.

Talk to the People Behind the Counter

We’ve preached this repeatedly at The Evening Draw:

Talk to the people working at your local cigar lounge.

Ask questions. Take recommendations. Buy the sampler. Join the cigar-of-the-month club. Get outside your normal rotation.

Otherwise, eventually you’re just buying different sizes of things you already know you like.

I had actually selected nearly everything I intended to purchase before really getting to know Ben, the Elite employee who ultimately became the most memorable part of the visit.

I asked him about a particular label. Elite no longer carried it.

That could have been the end of the conversation.

Instead, it was effectively the beginning.

What started as an employee helping someone buying a few cigars organically became two people sitting down, enjoying cigars and talking about them. We bounced through wrappers, blends, profiles and tobacco sourcing from places including Costa Rica and Paraguay. We talked about newer 2026 releases, cigars he’d yet to try and cigars I’d yet to encounter. We talked accessories, industry contacts, opportunities, manufacturers, retail and the cigar business itself.

We even discussed brands Elite didn’t carry—and where I might find them elsewhere.

Think about that for a second.

There’s an enormous difference between trying to extract another sale from the person standing in front of you and helping that person better enjoy cigars, even when the answer might send him somewhere else.

Somewhere along the way, The Evening Draw came up naturally. I showed Ben the site. That happened after the engagement had already developed, not when I walked through the door announcing that I write cigar reviews.

That distinction matters to me.

The hospitality wasn’t being performed for a review.

It was simply hospitality.

We eventually discussed Curivari Buenaventura, a cigar that has now jumped directly toward the top of my list to try. Not because Ben gave me some elaborate sales pitch, but because I have to practice what we preach.

I can’t tell readers to talk to lounge employees and then ignore the recommendations I receive when I do exactly that.

The unexpected Maceda that left with me tells essentially the same story.

I didn’t walk into Elite looking for it.

I walked out with it because I engaged.

The State of New Taxes, I Mean New York

Then there’s price.

New York be New Yorking.

As of this writing, New York imposes an excise tax of 75% of the wholesale price on cigars and most other tobacco products. That isn’t something I’m going to hold against Elite—or any other New York tobacconist trying to operate under the same rules.

I wasn’t shopping Elite with a spreadsheet open trying to determine whether I could save $1.37 somewhere else. The prices I encountered felt fair considering the environment in which the shop operates.

Could I have paid less elsewhere?

Probably.

Did I receive fair value for what I spent?

Absolutely.

And for New York readers, there’s something worth knowing about: Senate Bill S93 remains active in the 2025–2026 legislative session and is currently in the Senate Budget and Revenue Committee. The proposal would cap the state excise tax on cigars and premium cigars at the lesser of the existing 75% wholesale rate or 50 cents per cigar.

Seventy-five percent of wholesale or fifty cents?

Yeah. Fifty cents feels considerably easier to swallow.

If you’re a New York cigar smoker who thinks your local brick-and-mortar tobacconist is worth preserving, S93 is probably worth knowing about—and worth discussing with the people representing you.

The Company You Keep

There were clearly regulars in the room.

Everybody spoke.

That’s a small detail that says quite a bit about a cigar lounge.

I’ve been to Elite before and largely kept to myself. Even then, I vaguely remember being invited into casual conversation. This visit was different because most of my time was spent talking with Ben, so I’m not going to extrapolate a complete sociological profile of the clientele from a lightly occupied lounge.

But nothing about Elite felt cliquish.

There were regulars. There were conversations. And there was room to participate without feeling like you’d wandered uninvited into somebody else’s private club.

That’s about what I want from a lounge.

Would I Go Back?

This is where Lounge Life is going to differ from our cigar reviews.

I’m not assigning a numerical score to the furniture.

I’m not awarding points for the number of televisions.

And after visiting one lounge during this particular trip, I’m certainly not going to tell you Elite Cigar & Smoke is the best cigar lounge in Rochester.

I don’t know that.

I can’t tell you it has the lowest prices in town, because I didn’t shop every humidor in the area.

I can’t tell you it carries every cigar you could possibly want, because it doesn’t—and neither does anyone else.

I can tell you something considerably more useful:

I’d go back.

In fact, the next time I’m working in the area and have an afternoon available for a cigar, I expect I will.

The selection is expansive. The lounge is comfortable. The air was clean during my visit. The room is arranged for conversation rather than simply occupying space while you smoke.

But those aren’t the first reasons I’d return.

The first is how I felt while I was there—and how I felt after I left.

Ben was attentive, engaging and knowledgeable. He made recommendations without turning the interaction into a sales pitch. We exchanged information rather than one person lecturing the other. We talked about cigars neither of us had tried. He pointed me toward things I hadn’t encountered and openly discussed things Elite didn’t sell.

That’s value.

There is a reason people return to the same restaurant, buy another vehicle from the same manufacturer, or keep returning to the places where they’ve previously been treated well. Familiarity isn’t necessarily complacency. Sometimes it’s confidence earned through experience.

I knew before walking into Elite that I’d find a cigar I hadn’t smoked.

What I didn’t know was what I’d learn while I was smoking it.

That’s why you talk to the people behind the counter.

And that’s why I’ll be back.