Simon Chase obituary

[El Presidente]

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/simon-chase-obituary-qshq2lngv?shareToken=8c80f5267fb51104e10ab224b1db4d14

OBITUARY

Simon Chase Obituary

Englishman considered to be the world’s leading expert on Cuban cigars

March 29 2019, 12:00pm, The Times

Simon Chase and Fidel Castro in 1999 in Cuba

On February 18, 1985 Simon Chase boarded a Cubana Ilyushin Il-62 flight in Mexico City, bound for Havana. It was the final leg of an exhausting 30-hour, four-stop journey from London, at the time almost the only route to the Cold War outpost. The inflight catering, he diligently noted in his diary, consisted of spam and pineapple. A fellow passenger played a plastic trumpet, brilliantly, on the near-empty aeroplane.

In his top pocket, as ever, were the three props he always carried with him: a Moleskine notebook, a revolving pencil and a cigar. Chase, the marketing manager of the UK cigar importer Hunters & Frankau, was on his first “field trip” to meet the company’s supplier: Cuba’s communist government. At the time the fine cigar business was small-scale and burdened with a fuddy-duddy image.

Over the next three decades Chase would play a key role in changing that perception. During countless visits to the island, the former Conservative Party borough councillor would earn a reputation as the world’s undisputed expert on Cuban cigars, a sage to that eclectic mix of bon viveurs, plutocrats and rogues that shared his love for the expensive smokes. Fidel Castro liked him enough to put a paternalistic arm around him every time they met.

Simon George Chase was born in 1944 in Cambridge, the son of John Chase, a decorated RAF fighter ace, and Marjorie (née Cowell). He was educated at the Dragon School, Oxford, and then at Rugby, where his father was a mathematics teacher and housemaster. John Chase had a reputation as a fierce disciplinarian at the school. His pupils nicknamed him “the Big Bopper”, a reference to his habit of stalking the classroom wielding a large military bandsman’s drumstick, which he would throw at misbehaving boys without hesitation.

Less scholarly than his elder brother, James, an academic, Simon went directly from Rugby to work in London, where his father had organised a placement at an accountancy firm. It was a poor choice. Despite the family tradition, “numbers and arithmetic were an anathema to him”, a colleague recalls.

Chase soon switched careers to something that suited him far better: advertising. By the mid-1970s he had joined Saatchi & Saatchi as an account director. A natural raconteur, he later recalled how he enjoyed the lavish lunches on the agency budget, with a well-stocked “cigar trolley”.

That made him a natural choice for the position of marketing manager at Hunters & Frankau. The firm, which he joined in 1977, was by then in its fifth generation of family ownership. One of the diktats of its avuncular chairman, Nicholas Freeman, was that executives should be seen to enjoy the product they sold. Chase had no problem with that. He smoked cigars for most of the rest of his life. The first of the day, he insisted, should be lit “never before breakfast but prior to lunch”. The last, after dinner.

Tasked with increasing the market for Cuban cigars, but with a relatively limited budget, Chase borrowed a strategy from the fine-wine industry. He actively sought to educate potential buyers about the various brands on offer, so they would “experiment beyond the default Montecristo No 4”, he later said. The idea was that the more consumers knew about the different options, their varied flavours and exotic histories, the more they would buy.

His first significant hurdle in achieving that was Cuba itself. In the 1980s it was still wary of foreigners. Chase found researching its most popular export was near impossible. During his first trips to the island he was routinely chaperoned and prohibited from visiting any cigar factories, even though the company he represented was buying a significant proportion of the output. He also had to adapt to some Soviet-era austerities, soon learning to travel with his own soap and a bath plug, owing to the absence of both in state-run hotels.

Chase persevered, however, and, despite speaking little Spanish, managed to build trust and, eventually, friendship with the Cubans. He became a frequent visitor to the famed Vuelta Abajo area in western Cuba, where soil, climate and expertise combined to produce what is widely considered the best tobacco in the world. In Havana he could often be found having lunch with the cigar rollers in the factory canteens. As he developed his knowledge, recording every detail in his notebooks, Chase began writing books on cigars, including The Complete Guide for Habanos Enthusiasts, still considered the authoritative work on the subject.

Chase was a Conservative councillor in the London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham

His repeated trips to Cuba in the 1970s and 1980s did pique the interest of the British security services. Chase recalled receiving an embossed letter from the Ministry of Defence inviting him for a “chat” in Admiralty Arch. There, he was offered a sandwich, what he described as a “filthy” glass of red wine and quizzed about his work. That was the extent of his contact with the spooks, he said.

Politics was a lifetime interest for Chase and from 1978 to 1986 he served as a Conservative councillor in the London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. He never saw any contradiction between his political views and his dealings with Cuba. It was through his political work that he met his wife, Gabi, a manager at Riverside Studios, a local arts and community centre. They married in 1985 and had three children: Sam, a police officer; Isabelle, a research analyst; and Katie, a digital marketing executive. Isabelle and Katie are twins.

In the 1990s two developments had a dramatic effect on the Cuban cigar business. One was the collapse of the Soviet Union, forcing the Castro government to become more open to doing business with foreigners. The other was the launch, in 1992, ofCigar Aficionado, a magazine that helped to rebrand cigar smoking. Featuring images of Havana-puffing celebrities such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jack Nicholson, it was instrumental in making cigars appear aspirational and something even the relatively youthful could indulge in, prompting a global boom.

Chase was the auctioneer at the inaugural cigar festival in Cuba

In the late 1990s Cuba began hosting a cigar festival. Trade representatives and consumers were encouraged to spend a week in Havana, visiting plantations and factories, and smoking nearly non-stop. Chase was a fixture at the event, easy to find in his usual position, sipping a mojito on the wicker chairs of the Hotel Nacional terrace — immaculately dressed, usually in his “Cuba uniform” of a traditional guayabera shirt and a Panama hat.

The highlight of the festival, to this day, is a £500-a-head gala dinner, where handmade humidors, stuffed with hundreds of cigars, are auctioned to the highest bidder. Chase was asked to be the auctioneer for the inaugural event, in 1999, at the Tropicana Club. He proved a natural in the role, with his smooth baritone voice and unflappable demeanour. The star lot was a sculpture of the ancient Taíno god of tobacco, which featured an unusual detail, whereby pressing the god’s navel prompted a cigar to emerge. It sold for $150,000.

In the audience that night was Fidel Castro. He joined Chase on stage and watched, in apparent awe, as he elegantly worked the crowd and raised almost a million dollars. At the end of the evening the Cuban revolutionary gave the suave dinner-jacketed Englishman an extended hug. Over 15 years Chase raised about $15 million from the auctions, all of which was donated to Cuban healthcare.

Chase retired from Hunters & Frankau in 2009, but continued working as a consultant in the industry. He dedicated much of his time lobbying against tobacco legislation. His efforts helped to ensure one important exception to the 2007 ban on public smoking: customers are still allowed to smoke fine cigars inside “sampling rooms” in specialist tobacconist shops.

In 2015 he was treated for throat cancer. He did not dwell on the irony of that. Before surgery his doctor advised him that one consequence of his treatment would be he could never smoke again. He surrounded himself with friends, and reverently lit one last cigar: a Romeo y Julieta.
Simon Chase, cigar company executive, was born on the April 19, 1944. He died of cancer on March 11, 2019, aged 74