Many customers who come here the first time have only smoked second-rate cigars in the past and when they try their first Perdomo, they are impressed at the difference. So what makes the best cigars better than the rest?

Of course, the answer isn’t simple. There are lots of ingredients that go into making an excellent cigar. Most of those ingredients start well before the cigar makes it into the retail store. In fact, many of them start well before the tobacco makes it to the rolling room.

Every cigar starts with high quality tobacco – it is, after all, 100% plant – so a lot of importance goes to the seed stock, the health of the soil, weather conditions while growing, density of plants per metre, choice of fertilisers, and how well the plants are protected from pests (including choice of insecticides).

After the tobacco has been harvested, it must be cured and fermented with great care. This process, during which the leaf dies and undergoes chemical changes, takes several months. After fermentation, the tobacco must be aged for several years to ensure maximum smoothness and flavour. Errors in any of these steps during the maturing of the leaf can lead to inferior tobacco and therefore an inferior cigar.

One of the most common issues with cigars is that they haven’t been aged appropriately. This is one of the reasons many cigar aficionados will buy a box of cigars and then store them in their personal humidors for several years before they smoke them. Perdomo Cigars, however, are “ready to smoke”, meaning the tobacco is aged in the factory before they are shipped to retailers.

Signs that the tobacco has not been aged properly include an alkaline taste on the tongue or if the cigar keeps going out without a good reason (i.e. you have lit it properly and continue to puff on it every minute or two but it still goes out). These are signs that the manufacturer is probably using the tobacco before its time.

Once the tobacco has been sufficiently aged, a selection of leaves are chosen to become a “blend” and these leaves are then given to the rollers. Inexperienced cigar rollers may roll the tobacco too tightly making it difficult to draw air through the cigar. This is referred to as a “plugged cigar” and is also one of the most common problems with cigars. Fortunately, every single cigar made by Perdomo is tested on a “DrawMaster” machine before it leaves the factory, making sure that you will never get a plugged Perdomo.

Perdomo cigars tested on the DrawMaster. Photo by Sam Spurr http://inluminocomms.blogspot.com.au/

Finally, once they are sitting on the retailer’s shelves, cigars need to be stored carefully – between 65 – 72% humidity and around 22 º C. If they are allowed to become too humid or too dry or too hot, the delicate oils and flavours in the tobacco will be ruined.

So, as you can see, there are plenty of factors involved in creating the best cigars. If any one of these elements isn’t 100% correct, the cigar you smoke will not be the ideal experience. Which is why when we discovered Perdomo and learned about their quality control and vertical manufacturing process (i.e. they grow all of their own tobacco instead of buying it from secondary sources as many manufacturers do), we knew we were on to a good thing!

Jason Nelson demonstrates the correct method to light and re-light your cigar!

This highlights the importance of buying your cigars off a reputable retailer that knows how to look after and correctly store cigars.

Unfortunately, cigars are regularly being subjected to bad science and bad journalism.

A few months ago, Parade magazine ran an article called “The Dangers of Pipes and Cigars”. In the article, they reference a report done recently by Columbia University which, the article claims, showed that “smoking pipes or cigars doubled the odds of having an airflow obstruction.”

If this were indeed true, many of us would have to seriously reconsider our cigar habits.

The problem many cigar smokers have with this report, however, is that it is based on fluffy science.

As Smoke Magazine pointed out recently:

The Columbia study contained no new research, but an examination of a previous study that included just 56 individuals who smoked either cigars or pipes and did not smoke cigarettes.

Moreover, the study itself says “few participants smoked pipes or cigars…Effect estimates in this group were therefore relatively imprecise…” No kidding; what the survey actually showed was that among cigar-only smokers, the odds for decreased airflow to the lungs increased a trivial 1 percent when adjusted for age, race, sex, and height, and were 37 percent less than non-smokers when more carefully adjusted for 13 factors also including body mass, education, family history, and so on.

Additionally, the study report states “no U.S. studies have reported on the possible effects of cumulative pipe and cigar smoking on lung function.” This is wrong. In fact, the impact of cigar smoking was exhaustively reviewed by the National Cancer Institute in its monograph on cigars published in 1998.

Incidence of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) was examined using the American Cancer Society’s massive CPS-I study, which included 15,072 cigar smokers. The result? For those who smoked an average of 1–2 cigars per day, there was no impact at all vs. non-smokers up through age 64, and for those who do not inhale, no impact through age 79!

Now consider that in the U.S. in 2009, smokers of all types of cigars averaged just 2.93 per week and smokers of handmade, premium cigars averaged a grand total of 1.59 per week!

But the CPS-I results are nowhere mentioned in the Columbia “study.”

As I’ve said on the blog before when I covered the CPS-I study, I take my health very seriously and so I’m always keeping an eye out on the latest science on cigars and health. It is unfortunate that a lot of the media coverage on the subject is pretty fluffy and either out-right biased or based on bad science.

Here’s a quick guide to knowing what all of these terms mean.

1. The Blend. When cigar manufacturers create a cigar, it involves a unique combination of leaves from their crops to give each cigar a certain flavour, body and strength – a very similar process to creating wine or whisky. It’s a complex and wonderful process, more of an art than a science.

Each blend is made up of two basic parts:

The Filler – tobacco rolled inside the cigar comprising the bulk of the smoke.
The Binder – the tobacco leaf used to hold the whole affair together in a nice, neat cylinder.

For example, some of the Perdomo blends are the Lot 23, Habano, Perdomo² Limited Edition, Reserve 10th Anniversary, Patriarch, etc. How mild or full-bodied a cigar is, is predominately determined by the leaves used in the filler and the binder.

2, The Wrapper. Now each cigar also has a final piece which is called The Wrapper – the smooth, attractive tobacco leaf used to “dress up” the cigar for presentation. The wrapper can also add a lot of flavour to a cigar.

Cigar blends often come in different wrappers. In the Perdomo range, you’ll normally find our cigars come in Natural, Connecticut, Corojo, Criollo and Maduro wrappers.

Natural: Light brown, fully matured leaf which has been allowed to dry naturally and slowly in large barns. Grown under cheesecloth to protect the colour and appearance, as exposure to sunlight darkens the leaf. Smooth, creamy flavours.

Connecticut: A lighter colour, typically grown under shade, which delivers a characteristically smooth, creamy taste. Not overpowering in flavour.

Corojo: This rare, reddish, oily wrapper is traditional variety grown in Cuba. Slightly richer and oilier than a Natural.

Criollo: A smooth, oily, Nicaraguan leaf, grown under shade, delivering soft spice, with a light, creamy, cedar undertone.

Maduro: Dark brown and quite different from Natural or Corojo. Creating a Maduro leaf is a more extensive process that creates a sweet, pronounced taste and imparts a more intense flavour to a cigar.

My general advice to people getting into cigars for the first time is to start with a mild cigar and work your way up to the heavier, fuller-flavoured cigars. That’s what I did.

3. Size. The last part of choosing a cigar is determining the right size. When it comes to cigars, size means LENGTH and WIDTH. And, as we all know, SIZE DOES MATTER.

To make it a little easier, cigars tend to come in a standard range of sizes. Length and width (or “ring gauge”, as it’s properly known) are packaged into standard sizes. Length is usually measured in inches and ring gauge is measured in 64ths of an inch, so, for example, a 64-ring cigar would be an inch in diameter. The length and ring of a cigar will determine how long it takes to smoke. Longer, fatter cigars take longer to smoke than shorter, skinnier cigars. The size of cigar you choose will often depend on how much time you have to smoke and what feels most comfortable in your mouth. Ring gauge also determines how much surface area of the cigar is exposed to the air while burning – a fatter cigar smokes cooler and slower because more of the filler is exposed to air.

Let’s take the Perdomo Cuban Bullet as an example. It comes in the following sizes:

Robusto 5 x 50
Toro 6 x 50
Churchill 7 x 50
Torpedo 5 3/4 x 54

You’ll these same sizes crop up across the Perdomo range. As I said earlier before, the longer and higher ring gauge a cigar has, the longer it will take to smoke. So a good place to start is with a shorter cigar and get a feel for what size ring gauge feels best in your mouth.

For more on how to choose a cigar, we recommend the following book:

If they get too dry, moisture and the oils that pack a lot of flavour begin to evaporate from the cigar. It will get dry, brittle and hard. If you smoke it in this condition, the wrapper will probably unravel and the dry tobacco will burn hot and fast and have little flavour. Any house that has heating is likely to quickly dry out a cigar. Even if you live in a humid climate (like Queensland), our homes tend to have airconditioning running which reduces the humidity.

If cigars get too moist, mold starts to develop on the tobacco. You can wipe it off in the early stages, but if it’s left unattended, it’ll take over the cigars, and moldy cigars taste like musty basements smells. The cigar will also swell and split wide open from the excess moisture.

If cigars get too hot, the moisture will evaporate, drying out the cigars (so don’t leave them in your car). Most cigars also contain microscopic insect eggs which will hatch if they get too warm and the resulting bugs will eat your cigars. Fortunately, Perdomo puts all of our cigars through a special freezing process that exterminates all of these eggs, so that isn’t a problem our customers need to worry about. However, you still want to keep your cigars cool.

Don’t let them get TOO cold, though, because that can also rob them of their moisture.

So the rule is to try to keep your cigars cool (around 21º C) and humidified at just the right level (about 70% humidity).

And that’s where a humidor comes in handy.

Humidors come is all sorts of shapes and sizes – beautiful wooden boxes, zip-sealed bags, plastic boxes, and even closets.

There are lots of humidors available online on places like Ebay, but as a general rule, I recommend investing in a good quality humidor to store your cigars. After all, if you’re going to spend $400 or $500 on a box of cigars, you don’t want to store them in a cheap, low-quality humidor that could allow them to be ruined. A good humidor will be made with thoroughly kiln-dried or air-cured cedar. If insufficiently cured, the cedar will ooze resin and become spotty and ugly. It’s possible to use other woods as liners, but cedar is by far the best. It’s very porous and helps control the humidity inside the box by absorbing excess moisture but also giving it back to the air if the humidity inside the box starts to drop. It also adds a very slight but pleasant cedar aroma to the cigars as they sit in the box.

Also pay attention to the thickness of the walls of the humidor. If the humidity inside the box is 70% but the humidity outside is 10%, the moisture variation is likely to warp or crack the lining unless it’s made with something like thick cedar.

Another test of a good humidor is to raise the lid about three inches and let it drop. If the box is crafted well enough to create a tight seal, a “whoosh” of air will escape and precent the lid from slamming loudly.

Most premium tabletop humidors come equipped with a humidifying element and a hygrometer, which is a gauge that measures the relative humidity in the air. It’s usually a small, simple gauge – digital ones are usually better than dials, because you can fit more technology into the digital kinds, making them more accurate. It’s important though to make sure you check your cigars regularly using the “pinch test” – lightly pinch the cigar between your thumb and index finger, it should feel firm but not hard – don’t trust your hygrometer totally.

There’s a lot more we could say about humidors, but for now let’s finish by re-stating the important points:

1. It’s VERY important to store your cigars carefully.
2. Keep the temperature around 21º C and the humidity around 70%
3. If you’re going to be investing regularly in premium cigars, consider investing in a premium humidor.

For more information on how to use a humidor, we recommend getting the following book:

Buy your Perdomo Humidor here.