My Day with Jonathan Drew

(Gregory Mottola, Cigar Aficionado) When I stepped up to The American Hotel's porch, I admit that I fully expected Jon to be puffing a cigar, brazenly flouting the town's laws and festooning the hotel's exterior with plumes of smoke. Instead, I came upon a rather sedate guy sipping a Talisker, watching the scenery and chewing on an unlit pipe. It was one of the new pipes from his Drew Estate Tsuge pipe line introduced at last month's IPCPR trade show. They're made in Japan and are pretty hip, designed with a very nice combination of classic burl and newer materials. Very Drew Estate. Jonathan developed an eye for classic design at a young age. I never knew this until our quiet lunch, but he comes from a family background of art and antiques. His parents owned antique shops and he used to accompany his father to the auction houses. This type of early exposure to Victorian era art, Art Deco and Art Nouveau is sometimes exactly what's required to really turn on someone's artistic genes. Continued