A Mad Men-Inspired Cigar Room In Texas
In our modern age, it’s common to feel a longing for the past, for bygone eras when the world was simply different. These sentiments can be rooted in nostalgia, reminiscing of the good old days, or sometimes pondering how we might have fared in another time. Whatever the case may be, it’s captivating when someone manages to bottle up time and create a space that allows us to step into yesteryear. Steve Courter of Austin, Texas, has done just that. His 1950s-era cigar room subtly goes back in time, offering a quiet elegance with the air of a post-war study room, where a good smoke and a stiff drink feel like mandatory requirements.
Courter, who says he’s in his mid-to-late 60s, says he feels like an old soul. “I should have been born in 1920,” says Courter. “I play golf, I drink Bourbon and Scotch, I smoke cigars, I’m a dinosaur.” He’s a down-to-Earth, well-traveled man with a sly sense of humor, and he’s quite established in simplifying the art of relaxation. He’s been smoking cigars and sipping whisky since he was about 19 years old, employing the two as a way to let the weight off, but the quality of what he enjoys has evolved with age. “Back in my college days, it was a Swisher Sweet with Passport Scotch in the chapter room of a fraternity house. After college, I was in the Army and I graduated to White Owls and Cutty Sark with other soldiers in the field,” he says. “After the Army, I went into business and I graduated to H. Upmann and Dewar’s with people I probably didn’t want to be smoking with in the first place.”
After serving in the Army, Courter says he spent about 30 years in telecom and software, as CEO for several companies, before eventually becoming a professor at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, where he’s still employed. Courter’s previous work has positioned him all over the country and world: Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Boston, Washington, D.C. and beyond. Wherever he was, finding a cigar lounge was paramount, but he often dreamed of the day he’d have his very own smoking room.
Courter and his family moved from Boston to Austin nearly 20 years ago. For many years, he made use of the warmer climate, reserving his cigars for local cigar lounges or nearly anywhere outside, from hotel rooftops to the golf course. But he always knew that a particular room on the second floor of his Austin house would one day make a great cigar lounge. The room measures roughly 15 feet by 30 feet and for many years, it served as the family’s catch-all space. Courter called it the “go to hell room,” where you put “stuff” that you can’t find a home for. He always saw the potential of the space—especially a small nook in the corner that was the perfect size for a custom humidor he had back in Boston—but he had to wait. It was this very piece, along with his son still growing up in the house, that put his cigar room plans on hold for years.
The humidor was custom-built for Courter in Vermont, remaining in his Boston home when they moved, and it stayed there as he rented the house out for quite some time. “But I said someday I’m going to rip that thing out and ship it here to Texas,” says Courter. Eventually, the “perfect storm” came together: his son went off to school in Scotland, they sold the Boston house and the humidor finally made it to Austin. Now, the cigar room transformation could begin. “That was the cornerstone for the rest of the smoking room,” says Courter.
To complete the job, Courter brought in a trusted design firm, CG&S Design-Build, that had already done several projects on his Austin home, from a complete kitchen remodel to redesigning the outside of the house. “Their DNA is all over this house,” he says. “They’re really good, really detailed, they’ll listen to you, but they'll give you leadership when it’s time to do leadership.” For the cigar room, Courter imagined a 1950s-style study room, with dark green walls and elegant wood paneling, like something out of the hit television show “Mad Men.” “I gave them the vision, and they ran with it,” he says. Courter gives particular credence to the woodwork in the room, which he says is the most complimented element of the space from visitors. The cigar room took a couple months to complete, and it was finished three years ago.
Courter’s cigar space has everything an aficionado needs. There’s a gorgeous cherry wood and black marble bar, reminiscent of the sophisticated cocktail era of the 1950s. Courter has spirits and wine from all over the world, including spirits from Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania, along with bottles of French wine. He also has standard cigar room selections, such as Balvenie, Jack Daniels, Dewar’s and Blanton’s. And should your heart desire more wine, wine racks border either side of the custom cabinet humidor, tucked away in a nook in the corner of the room.
Courter laid the space out to serve as both a place of solace and an office. The various lighting options in the room reinforce this dual purpose, with the ability to brighten the room up for a work call or cool it down for a more intimate, relaxing setting. The space is outfitted with a large TV, a wood and black marble fireplace, hidden storage in the wood paneling, a leather couch, a work desk, a large bookshelf, his cherished humidor and a sizable, handmade coffee table. The latter piece was bought by Courter in Germany in 1980, when he was in the Army. It’s one of many relics that he has scattered around the space, which sat in wait for many years until his dream cigar room became a reality. For ventilation, Courter installed a single smoke eater in the room that he says does the trick, with no smoke lingering as enjoys cigars.
He keeps most of his personal mementos on his bookshelf and the area around his desk, including photos from his past and of his parents, as well as his father’s artifacts from World War II. Cigars are one of the ways Courter can still feel connected to his father. His pops was a cigar smoker himself and back in 1974, just as Courter was about to head to college, his dad taught him how to blow smoke rings with cigars. Sadly, that was his last memory with his father, who passed away suddenly two months later. “I can still do it perfectly,” says Courter, referring to blowing smoke rings as his dad taught him. Cigars are in his DNA. Courter even recently found out he has Dutch lineage with an actual surname of “Courten,” before it was changed when his ancestors moved stateside. As he dug further, he discovered that he came from a long line of cigarmakers in Holland.
Now, Courter turns to cigars as his own source of escape and as a way to decompress after long days of teaching. “It’s kind of nice after eight hours of lecture,” he says. “Half way through I’m tired of teaching these guys and I can think in four hours I’ll be in my cigar room.” For Courter, he likes to break down cigar smoking into four main elements: “what you're smoking, where you're smoking, with who you’re smoking and what you pair it with,” he says, before adding a concession: “and sometimes, you just want to be alone.” He estimates it’s about an 80/20 split on smoking by himself in the room versus having friends over. But Courter keeps his invite list small, to cigar smokers and known friends only. “I’m over 60, I’ve met everyone I’m ever going to like,” he quips.
Courter estimates he uses his space at least four times a week. “It’s the room I’m going to die in,” he says, in quite a matter-of-fact tone. It’s his go-to-spot for sports and relaxing, but he’ll also do his virtual meetings there. “I like having Zoom board calls because it kind of sets the tone,” he says, before adding with a laugh that sometimes he’ll position the camera so the gun rack on the wall is in the background, further setting the mood with his colleagues.
Bourbon and Scotch, particularly single malts, are Courter’s go-to spirits and his ideal pairing partners with cigars. His smoke of choice varies, and while he likes to try new cigars, he has some go-to brands he usually falls back on. “It kind of depends on the mood I’m in, I’m on a big Rocky Patel kick now,” he says, adding that Oliva, H. Upmann and Macanudo are also some of his favorites. “If I get cigars I don’t like, I’ll put them in a bag and give them to people and they think I’m nice.” His cigar collection is dispersed between his in-room humidor, another he has downstairs and ones he keeps at-the-ready in his golf bag.
In the end, all that matters for Courter is that he has a spot of his own. “After 15 years, the stars just aligned for it,” he says. “It’s aging with me, which is nice.”
