A good cigar used to come with one drink: something brown and strong. Not anymore. London and Zurich's top cigar lounges are pairing smokes with champagne, mezcal cocktails, sweet wine and even tea — and the experts say the old rules are overdue for a rethink.

Take The Emory hotel near Hyde Park, whose rooftop Cigar Merchants lounge offers six flights that match a single cigar with three prestige spirits. One flight pairs a Partagas Cedros Year of the Snake with Yamazaki 18-year-old, Ardbeg Traigh Bhan and a Clase Azul Durango mezcal — a mix of Japanese single malt, peaty Islay and smoky agave. Head of cigars Blue Curran notes that guests are far more adventurous than they used to be. Non-residents can book a tasting flight, which is also the only way to secure a table. Curran's own favourite combo is surprisingly simple: Billecart-Salmon Le Sous Bois champagne with a classic Cohiba Robusto, the wine's fine texture and sweet spice lifting the smoke. The hotel also matches cigars to bespoke tea blends — a perfumed sakura-smoked black tea calls for a floral vintage El Rey del Mundo.

At Villa Florhof, Lalique's new Zurich hotel with its own Davidoff fumoir, head sommelier Julien Beltzung champions cocktails, especially tequila- and mezcal-based ones. The house Paloma — mezcal, homemade vanilla syrup, grapefruit and bubbles — refreshes the palate rather than drying it out, which he says is the problem with big dark spirits. His left-field suggestion: aged sweet wines. A mature Sauternes such as Château Lafaurie-Peyraguey (20-plus years old, ideally) brings dried fruit, caramel and honey with enough acidity to keep things fresh.

There's practical wisdom in the pairing boom too. Jimmy McGhee of St James's merchant James J.Fox points to what he calls "drinking time": a large-format cigar can take over an hour, so a cask-strength rum is a bad idea by the end of it. His go-to for a Romeo y Julieta Short Churchill is a Cuban mojito; a martini alongside a Quai d'Orsay brings out cedar and pepper in the smoke. And if you'd rather skip alcohol entirely, he swears by a double espresso with a Davidoff Entreacto, or delicate aged white teas from China.

For travellers, this matters because the cigar lounge has quietly become one of the more interesting tasting rooms in town. Whether you smoke or not, flights like The Emory's offer a structured way to compare everything from Islay whisky to mezcal, and the venues themselves — rooftop London, a heritage Zurich townhouse — are destinations in their own right. Book ahead: access is often limited to residents or tasting bookings.