Edgar Cullman Jr. simply radiates optimism and good cheer. Though his company is in the crosshairs of any number of government and health organizations, and despite competitive threats of considerable ferocity and complexity, the president and CEO of General Cigar clearly enjoys his work.

Why? He loves cigars, and the cigar business, as has every male member of his family, apparently, for many generations. This shared enthusiasm has helped build the world’s foremost producer of premium, hand-rolled cigars, with names like Macanudo, Partagas, and Cohiba.

The story begins in the mid-1800s when Mr. Cullman’s great-great-grandfather emigrated from Germany and took up selling and dealing in tobacco. In the early 1900s Joseph Cullman Jr. put the family on the map by buying prized Havana seed and planting it in the lush Connecticut River Valley.

The result was a stunning advance in tobacco flavor and quality; soon the family was one of the largest growers of wrapper tobacco in the state. Though the wrapper only accounts for 5% of the weight of a cigar, it is thought to make up 60% of the flavor.

Fast forward to the mid-1940s, when Edgar Cullman Sr. was put to work learning how to make cigars – by hand, of course. As he learned the craft, this generation decided the time had come to move the family into the production end of the business.

In 1960 the Cullmans were able to buy General Cigar, which at the time produced White Owl, William Penn, and other mass-market brands. Eight years later, the company purchased a cigar factory in Jamaica, along with its brand Macanudo – at the time a small line exported only to Britain.

The family took considerable time to rework the Macanudo line before its introduction to America. Ultimately it was remade with a new specially grown and aged Connecticut wrapper. The line was an instant hit, and soon became the country’s leading premium brand.

Edgar Cullman Jr. joined the company in 1974 after a stint in the army and in the training program at Manufacturers Hanover Bank. He, too, spent time in the fields and the factories, learning close-up how to sort wrappers and make a cigar. Around the time of his joining the business the family bought the American rights to Partagas cigars, one of the best-known premium brands in Cuba, which was produced by the Cifuentes family.

Here’s where the story of General Cigar, and the industry, becomes a bit complicated. When Castro took over Cuba in 1959 he also took over the cigar companies. The prior owners fled the country.

Because of an embargo, importers were no longer allowed to bring Cuban cigars into this country. However, ex-patriot families, like the Cifuentes, were able to market their cigars, now produced elsewhere, in America under their former names. Simultaneously, the Cuban government was selling a similar product under the exact same name everywhere else in the world.

What a mess – and it’s only going to get more complicated. Were there to be a change of government in Cuba, and a loosening of trade restrictions, the competing claims on well-known Cuban brands will surely be argued in the courts for come time.

Though Cuban cigars today do not measure up to the legendary pre-revolutionary product, the fall-off in quality has to do with improper aging and other cost-cutting measures that could be rectified. The soil remains the same, and it is the soil, as in the case of wines, which determines the underlying quality.

Producers like General Cigar, which now manufacture in the Dominican Re public and Honduras, may have to line up Cuban supplies when and if the dam breaks, to maintain their competitive edge. This may not be easy.

This is not the only challenge the company faces. The good news for General Cigar about the recent ban on smoking in New York City is that cigar smoking had already been forbidden in most venues. The bad news is that the anti-smoking forces are gearing up in Europe, another major market, and they have only become stronger in America.

Astonishingly, it doesn’t really seem to matter. The urge to smoke cigars waxes and wanes seemingly irrespective of health warnings or social opprobrium. Long before the recent health alert, cigar smoking entered into a long-term decline. In 1920 American men smoked on average 269 cigars per year. By 1993 that figure had dropped to a low of 25.

During the prolonged downturn, the family, under the corporate name of Culbro, branched into other activities such as real estate and nursery products.

However, starting in the early 1990s, tastes changed, with young people especially flocking to cigars as a symbol of the good life. By last year consumption is estimated to have picked up to 48 cigars a year.

General Cigar’s sales track imports of premium cigars into America, which hit a low in 1991 of 73 million, and then ballooned to 418 million in 1997. Imports in 2003 were estimated at 274 million. According to Cullman, the industry was hard-pressed to keep pace with the booming demand of the 1990s, and a lot of inferior product came onto the market. Disappointment with the product may have contributed to a consequent fall-off in sales.

In any case, the 1990s saw a great expansion of the company. Demand for its products rose more than 60% a year for several years. In 1996 revenues for the company reached an all-time high of around $250 million. The company celebrated the resurgence in popularity by opening its first cigar bar, called Club Macanudo, in New York.

The boom was also the precursor to the family taking some of their investment off the table. They first sold stock to the public in 1997,reducing their ownership position. In 1999 they sold General Cigar’s mass market brands such as White Owl to Swedish Match, one of the world’s largest tobacco companies.

A year later, they acquiesced to Swedish Match tendering for much of the publicly held stock of the company, reducing their ownership to 36%.

Today revenues for General Cigar top $150 million; about 90% of sales are in America. That concentration reflects the presence in Europe of Cuban products, and the reality that America is the biggest market. It also presents the company’s greatest opportunity – especially now that it has an alliance with Swedish Match.

What does the future hold for General Cigar? Shifts in fortune depend on the situation in Cuba, its strategic partnership with Swedish Match, the success of new brands such as the Diablo launched on Halloween of this year, and, possibly, the whimsical tastes of the next generation.

It apparently does not hold the prospect of either of Cullman’s sons taking over the helm. Both are interested in the arts, leaving a nephew, David Danziger, next in line. Maybe it’s time the women in the family got involved.