1. Is there a difference between convenience store cigars and cigar shop cigars?

There is a huge difference between the cheap prepackaged cigars and those available at quality smoke shops. Most of the mass-produced cigars include non-tobacco ingredients such as paper, saltpeter (for even burning) and PG or Glycerin (to prevent them from drying out). Quality cigars contain only tobacco and are normally handmade. Most quality cigars contain top-of-the-line leaves, and are made with long-filler, meaning the leaves run from one end of the cigar to the other. These handmade cigars offer excellent craftsmanship, flavor and enjoyment. The higher prices are due to the costs involved in producing such a cigar, from daily tending of the plants, to leaf selection and fermentation, through aging, rolling, boxing, distributing and advertising, these cigars go through rigorous quality control and many steps before they reach our shelves and your hands.

2. How do I pick a good cigar?

When you visit your local tobacconist, you might be intimidated by the quantity of cigars there are to sample. If you are a new smoker, you should start off with mild to medium bodied cigars as you will enjoy them much more than if you start with something too strong.

Inspect your chosen cigars wrapper for discolorations and imperfections. Gently squeeze the body of the cigar. You want to feel a firm yielding of the cigar without it being too soft. Too much moisture in a cigar will cause it to burn unevenly and smoke excessively. Too dry of a cigar will cause it to be harsh-flavored and burn hotly. As you feel and smoke different cigars, you will get a feel for what you like.

Cigars rolled in different countries will all have variations in aroma, flavor, strength and power. It is up to the individual smoker to decide what brands and qualities he/she favors in a cigar. That's the fun of cigar smoking and collecting!

3. What are cigars comprised of?

Fine cigars are composed of three types of tobacco; the Wrapper which is the outside leaf you see and influences flavor by up to 60%, the Binder which holds the filler together, and the Filler which is generally a blend of fine tobaccos from one or more strains or countries combined together for flavor.

4. What are the different types of tobacco used in a cigar?

It is important to know that are two different types of seed variety, corojo and criollo, each of which produces very different plants. The corojo plant, named after El Corojo Vega, the famous plantation where its seed was developed, is designed to produce the finest wrapper leaves. The criollo plant is the perfect strain of the only true Cuban tobacco seed, producing four of the five tobacco leaves which are blended to create the variety of flavors found in Havana cigars.

Tobacco plant leaves have different uses depending on how high or low they are on the stalk. The leaves on the plant are grouped into seven levels. From top to bottom these are: coronas, semi-coronas, centro gordo, centro fino, centro ligero, uno y medio and libra de pie. The highest quality leaves are found in the middle, or centro, of the plant and are used as wrappers. The upper or corona leaves are used as fillers, and the lower leaves as binders.

Wrapper leaves are also classified by color, in seven shades. These are: double claro (light green), claro (light tan), colorado claro (light to mid-brown), colorado (reddish-brown), colorado maduro (medium brown), maduro (dark brown) and oscuro (dark or black).

Three different types of leaf are used for the filler. Dark, strongly flavored, slow-burning ligero leaves harvested from the top of the plant and aged for two years, are placed in the middle of the filler. Lighter-colored and milder seco leaves from the middle of the plant and aged up to 18 months, surround the ligero leaves. Then volado leaves with little flavor from the lower part of the plant, aged up to about 9 months, are wrapped around the other leaves because of their excellent burning qualities. The varying proportions of these three leaves is what gives each cigar label its unique and distinctive flavors.

5. How long are cigars aged before they are sold?

Fermentation of tobacco takes place in two stages. First, the leaves are heaped in piles about 3 feet high under jute burlap coverings, and left to ferment for up to three months in temperatures no higher than 92°F. Then the piles are broken up and graded for use as either wrapper, filler or binder, and sorted for size, color and quality.

The flattened leaves are then returned to the fermenting house, stacked in piles up to 6 feet high, tightly packed and stored in darkened rooms in temperatures no higher than 110°F. In this state they are known as burros. This second fermentation allows impurities of moisture, sap, nicotine and ammonia to be released from the leaves. They are kept as long as six months in the case of the darkest maduro wrappers to get those rich shades of brown and black.

The leaves are then resorted, wrapped in palm leaves in square bales called tercios, and sent to the warehouses where they slowly mature - sometimes as long as two years, depending on the brand.

6. What is a cigar beetle and how bad are they?

Have you ever seen a weevil? Cigar beetles look just like them. Tiny, dark brown cigar eating machines. When you get them, you'll know you have them by the holes they leave in your cigars. They will hatch in and eat their way out of a cigar before you even know you have one. And where there's one, there will be more. Luckily they only live about a month, but they can leave a lot of eggs in that time, which will repeat the cycle. Cigar beetles are much more prevalent in Cuban cigars than in cigars from the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua or Honduras. Beetles can easily hatch when the temperature climbs up to about 80°F and is sustained for even a few days.

The key to controlling an infestation is isolation. If you must attempt to save those cigars, your best recourse is to put them in a vapor-locked bag and then in the freezer. Note that the live bugs and pupae will die within 24-48 hours of freezing, but to kill the eggs would require months at those temperatures.

7. What is the difference between mold and plume?

Mold can grow on cigars like it can on anything that is too moist. On a cigar, it is a greenish-grayish color that cannot be scraped off with your nail. Plume, or bloom, on the other hand, is a crystalline grayish white and looks like specks on a cigar. If you rub them or scrape them with your nail - they disappear. Plume is the natural byproduct of an aged cigar. Some of the cigars oils are secreted and create those lovely crystals - the sign of a very nicely kept cigar.

9. What should I use to cut my cigar?

There are several different items you can use that achieve the same basic purpose, in various ways:

Cutter	Scissors	Punch	Wedge Cutter	Poker

Cutters: Cutters are a guillotine style device used to slice the cap off of the cigar. They are available in single, double, and even triple blade, single and double blades being the most common. Double blade cutters are usually more expensive than their single blade counterparts, but they will last far longer, as they are self-sharpening. Most single blade cutters are disposable, and should be thrown away once they have stopped making clean, sharp cuts.

Scissors: Cigar scissors resemble double blade cutters in performance, but are not self-sharpening. They are known to crush or tear the head off the cigar if they are not kept at peak sharpness.

Punch: A punch cuts a small circle into the cap. Some have an ejection spring to push out the cut tobacco. The punch does not work well on thin cigars. It works especially well on cigars of 54 ring gauge or more. A guillotine cutter can not usually accommodate these wide bodied cigars. The punch hole also serves to relieve you from having to put the whole cigar in between your lips, which can be uncomfortable on the jaw. Rather, you can "sip" the smoke through the punch opening.

Wedge Cutter: These cutters notch a "V" down the center of the cap, about an 1/8-1/4" deep. Typically, they work very well on thin (less than 40 ring size) and tapered (torpedo shaped) cigars. They do not give a clean cut on wider gauge caps.

Poker: Pokers are a great item to have when one of your favored cigars is hard to draw on. Occasionally, a bit of tobacco bunches up at the heart of a cigar and choices are few for getting a proper draw or burn. That's when you need a poker. You insert the pin-like rod through the head of the cigar as straight as you possibly can, to try and break up the clog. You should also use the poker at the foot of a cigar as well, and carefully penetrate in a straight line to ease the clog from the bottom.