Fumée Cigar lounge closed on December 31, 2011 but lives on as an ecommerce site run by Kevin Paige in Danbury, Connecticut. The story of Fumée Cigars starts like this.

Fumée was founded in March of 2007 by Heather Haddad, a cigar passionado from Tucson, Arizona. Haddad gained national attention in 2006 by publicly opposing higher cigar taxes being put to California voters in a proposition. She has also been featured in Cigar Aficionado, Smoke Magazine and on Dogwatch Cigar Radio.

Fumée began as a cigar media company, primarily focused on the Fumée Cigar Podcast, which featured interviews with cigar luminaries. Today the podcast has over 14,000 subscribers from all over the world. In October of 2007, Haddad, joined by business school colleague Ralph Pina, launched the Fumée eStore. At the time Fumée was one of the few online retailers who sold and shipped cigars by the stick. Fumée also distinguished itself on service, providing prompt customer care and carefully shipping cigars with humidipacks to ensure maximum freshness.

In November, 2008 Fumée took the next step in its evolution by opening the first brick and mortar lounge north of Austin in Cedar Park, TX. Featuring the largest complimentary lounge in the Austin area, a 300 sq/f humidor, free WiFi, coffee, tea, beer and wine, a poker table, and outside seating area, the Fumée Cigar Lounge has quickly grown to be a favorite of aficionados from all over Texas.

Heather Haddad is a native of California who grew up in Tucson, AZ. She graduated from the University of Arizona, later obtaining her MBA at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

Heather began smoking at the age of 18 and had always dreamed of owning her own cigar business. After graduation she decided to move to Texas because of the low taxes and lack of a statewide smoking ban. She resides in Austin with her husband Anthony, her cat Rambo, and dog Murphy.

She maintains a personal blog at http://heatherhaddad.com.

She is also the main contributor to our Twitter account.

Ralph Pina was born in Cuba, moving to the US at the age of 11. He has lived and worked in Miami, DC, Detroit, Monterey, and now Round Rock, TX. He received his undergraduate degree at Florida International University, and his MBA at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

Having worked in government and large companies, he decided to join Heather in starting Fumée. He lives with his wife Johanna, their dog Rocco, and their cat Bella.

His personal blog and website is http://ralphfortexas.com.

He tweets (twitters?) at twitter.com/ralph_pina.