Jake’s Cigar Bar, Lexington, Kentucky

[JohnS]

Jake’s Cigar Bar, Lexington, Kentucky

Dec 2, 2025 - By Larry Olmsted

Photos/Jake's Cigar Bar 

There’s a photo on the wall at Jake’s Cigar Bar showing the Mayor of Nicholasville presenting a key to the city to Jake and his wife Autumn. It’s unusual décor for a cigar bar, but then again, a lot of things about Jake’s are out of the box. The reason for the mayor’s praise is because this is one of the world’s few cigar bars that has become a tourist destination in its own right, a place people make a pilgrimage to. This is especially true when the University of Kentucky football or basketball games are on, when the thoroughbreds are running at nearby Keeneland, an iconic racetrack, or when the world-renowned horse sales happen at the track. It has become a tradition for new racehorse owners to come here to celebrate their acquisition.

Jake is a professional chef who loves cigars, and he and his wife were high school sweethearts. After stints in restaurant kitchens they decided to open their own place in 2010. Ironically, there is no food here, but they welcome guests to order in. Jake’s was an instant hit and soon outgrew its space, so the couple acquired the lot for the current suburban location and built a bespoke temple to cigars and whisky, which opened in 2019. The cavernous space has thick beams supporting an exposed ceiling soaring four stories above the barroom floor, and a massive ventilation system that can turn over the entire interior atmosphere in 11 minutes. There’s a second level loft for private events with its own bar overlooking the main floor. A large outdoor seating area of couches is set beneath a pergola with spinning ceiling fans, alongside a green court space for bocce, cornhole and putting. In a small strip mall across a parking lot is a retail shop called Jake’s Market, which has its own humidor (with longer opening hours), a large array of cutters, lighters and travel humidors, plus local craft foods and souvenirs. Inside and out, Jake’s holds several hundred people, and it is open 363 days, closing only for Thanksgiving and Christmas. From the moment you enter it is a well-planned, curated ode to the passions of the owners.

Enter Jake’s Cigar Bar and you’ll get the aroma of Spanish cedar from the entryway vestibule—this place smells like a humidor as you walk in. A bottle of Bourbon and a Jake’s private label cigar were buried under the threshold for good luck at groundbreaking. There is a cigar quote from Winston Churchill on the entry wall, and Jake named his own son Winston out of adoration for the great British statesman. Inside the layout is simple, a long walk-in humidor running the entire right side of the space, with floor-to-ceiling glass windows, about the width of a three-car garage. It is designed so no sun ever hits it, to protect the cigars inside. Most of the space is given over to an eclectic mix of leather and fabric couches and overstuffed chairs, with old Bourbon barrels as end tables, low coffee tables, and the occasional chess set. The vibe is roadhouse meets living room, the kind of place where you might see a local smoking, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. Hanging over the couches is a huge, custom moving sculptural chandelier of thin carved wood strips, an homage to tobacco drying. On one wall there’s a portrait of Jake’s first dog, Gordo, smoking a cigar and drinking a Martini. 

The back wall is one long bar—about 20 stools long—with six-tiered display shelving behind and a rolling metal ladder to access higher levels. “When we first opened, a local paper did an article about us and I boasted that we had more than 30 different whiskies. Now we have over a thousand.” In addition to a deep list of local Kentucky whiskies, including more than 50 private cask bottlings since they opened, they also have an impressive array of Tequilas and wines. More than almost any cigar bar you will come across, Jake’s has a huge customer base among women, almost half and half, and the couple has always emphasized a product selection catering to all their clients. 

They are especially famous for their painstakingly crafted Smoked Old Fashioned, a fiery show, and make their own tobacco bitters in house. They bring in containers of the same Kentucky limestone branch water local Bourbon is famous for and serve oversized cubes, carved by hand. The entire floor of Jake’s is reclaimed old wood from a Jim Beam rick house. The most famous American distillers, such as Wild Turkey’s Jimmy Russell, the “Buddha of Bourbon,” and Jim Beam’s Fred Noe have been known to stop into Jake’s, now an ingrained part of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail culture.

Jake says his personal favorites are Fuente and Davidoff, and the shop carries about 500 varieties of cigars, including the Cohiba Weller collection for whisky pairings. The priciest is the Davidoff Royal Release ($150), you can buy an Arturo Fuente Rare Pink for $55 and there are plenty of offerings in the twenties or less, such as Diamond Crown ($21-$25), Ashton VSG ($21) and CAO Brasilia ($17). There’s also a private label, rolled by Jesus Fuego in Nicaragua. 

All of the bartenders are cross trained in not only mixology but cigars, so they can help and are very eager with advice. Inside the humidor there are signs with employee picks of the week by different staffers, just like at an independent bookstore. “If someone comes in and doesn’t smoke much, we are not going to recommend a triple maduro. We don’t care if you smoke a light cigar, we want you to be happy and feel good the next day and come back. I don’t know how many people have had their first cigar here.” And they keep coming back.

Jake’s Cigar Bar
100 Langley Drive
Nicholasville, KY 40356
(859) 273-0351
https://www.jakescigarbar.com/

Monday-Sunday: 12 p.m. to 1 a.m.

Source: https://www.cigaraficionado.com/article/jake-s-cigar-bar-lexington-ky

[WestCoastSmokin]

Wow that looks like a great place to stop in for a smoke!