The sweet aroma from Marvin Shanken’s 15-year-old Cuban cigar wafts through his eighth-story corner office, the smoke dancing in front of windows looking out onto New York’s Park Avenue South.

Sporting his favored suspenders, the bearded, bespectacled publisher of Wine Spectator, Cigar Aficionado, and a handful of other wildly successful periodicals, sits back and puffs from the 7-inch Dom Perignon he currently is enjoying to its fullest. One gets the feeling that this man would look almost unnatural without a cigar wedged between his lips.

Shanken ’68 has dedicated his career to the finer things in life. Now, having worked tirelessly for decades transforming Spectator from a virtually extinct, nearly bankrupt niche publication into one of the world’s foremost authorities on wine, with readership topping 2 million, he has vowed to downshift just a bit, to treasure nightly dinners at home with his wife, Hazel, and their 17-year-old daughter, Jessica, savor every sip of Cabernet, relish the taste of each rich cigar.

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“I’ve been a workaholic,” Shanken, 61, says. “You have to work hard and be committed and passionate to build something of substance. In the last five or six years, I’ve made it my business to balance my private life with my business. Now that I have a business that’s doing OK, I’m able to take time off to enjoy the fruits of my labor. I don’t want to go through life and at my funeral have people say, ‘Wow, this guy was great. Look what he built and look how hard he worked.’ I want them to say, ‘Look what he built and look at how he enjoyed life while he was here.’”

The perimeter of Shanken’s office is crammed with autographed pictures of him with, well, everyone. There’s Marvin and buddy Rudy Giuliani. Here he is with Bill Clinton. Marvin and the cast of The Sopranos. Fuggetaboutit!

But in reality, more than just the rich and famous find their way into Shanken’s world. To a certain degree, anyone who’s ever read Spectator or Aficionado knows Shanken. The magazines are an embodiment of his passions, pleasures, and beliefs.

“It’s really just giving people what you think they would want and appreciate, and being committed to it,” he says. “It’s a reflection of my interests. Gambling, drinking, traveling, golf. That’s what it’s all about.”

Just where Shanken’s taste for the good life originated is a bit mysterious. He grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of Oscar and Evelyn, neither of whom indulged in spirits or tobacco. They did, however, instill in him values he has drawn on throughout his life.

“From my mother I learned to think creatively, and from my father I learned about honesty, integrity, and values,” he says.

In an industry known for turnover, Shanken has inspired startling loyalty among his staff. Many of the key players at M. Shanken Communications have been with him for more than 20 years.

“He treats people with respect and dignity,” says Steven Florio, vice chairman of Advance Magazine Group, which publishes Vogue and GQ, among others. “He’s a very decent human being. A lot of times people who are at the head of million-dollar companies get very detached from the real world. Marvin, as much as he loves to sit down with some great vintage wine or some cigar that’s 45 years old, that level of sophistication, he’s also the same guy that you can go to a ball game with and eat hot dogs and drink beer. He’s really a renaissance man.”

Anxious to flee the harsh New England winters, Shanken flew south after high school to the University of Miami, where he developed an interest in real estate—and cigars.

“I smoked a little bit during college, but it was cheap, wooden-tipped cigars,” he says.

After earning a business degree, Shanken applied to AU’s School of Business Administration, one of only a handful of universities that offered an MBA in real estate appraisal.

He was rejected.

“It had a great program, so I went anyway and started taking classes at night,” Shanken says. “I tried to prove that I could handle the curriculum. I got pretty good grades, and after the first year, they let me in.”

When Shanken first arrived in Washington, he opened the Yellow Pages to the real estate appraising section, focused on the letter “A,” and began hunting for a job. After dialing just one phone number, to the offices of the American Real Estate Appraisal Company, he had a bite.

“They invited me in for an interview, and they offered me a job at a buck and a half an hour,” Shanken says.

After earning his MBA, Shanken went to work on Wall Street, frequently utilizing the fundamentals he absorbed in graduate school.

“AU was very important because they had the case-study approach,” he says. “I learned a lot about the challenges of businesses and how to analyze businesses that I had never known before. It was very helpful in terms of introducing me to a lot of concepts, words, ideas that are a part of the business vocabulary. Then you go out into the real world and you really learn.”

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