What's in a Cigar?
A cigar is a surprisingly complex product. It looks fairly simple, to be sure. About six inches long and a little more than half an inch in diameter. Made from tobacco wrapped with yet more tobacco. Simple. But the devil is in the details in this case.
Starting from the center and working out...
You find a variety of tobaccos in a cigar. Some are grown in Cuba where cigar tobacco cultivation goes back centuries. Others are the result of crops grown by refugees from Cuba, mainly Honduras and the Dominican Republic. But other countries grow tobacco, too, including even the United States.
That tobacco can be shade grown, in which case the smoke is often milder. Or it can be darkened and riped in the open, so that the tobacco gives a fuller, denser taste. In either case, how tightly packed and what kind of filler is used will have an effect on the quality and taste.
The filler can be either of two types: long or short. Short filler is composed of pieces of tobacco leaf, often what is left over after processing or use in higher quality cigars. Long filler is made of strips of tobacco leaf, usually of very high quality. Long filler produces a more uniform draw and flavor.
Binder is created from tobacco leaves as well and encloses filler, making for a firm cigar. A good binder will actually perform mostly that mechanical function and not contribute much to the taste at all.
Holding all that together is the wrapper, the outer layer of the cigar. Usually you'll observe a cigar has spiral lines. That line is the edge of the leaf that wraps the interior tobacco.
It comes in a variety of types, categorized by color.
For example, candela is a greenish-brown wrapper leaf whose color comes from harvesting the leaves before they're fully ripe. They are then heat treated. Rarely used in quality cigars today, you'll find them in the 5-packs in some stores of the sort that don't specialize in quality tobacco products.
At the other end of the scale is oscuro, a very dark brown leaf grown in Brazil, Nicaragua and elsewhere. It adds considerably to the overall flavor of a fine cigar, especially ones with an already strong taste.
There are several others that range in between. Naturally, no one can say definitively which is 'the best', since taste is a very individual affair. But when selecting a quality cigar, be sure to examine and ask about all the components. Quality cigars come in an array of shapes and sizes - corona, torpedo, robusto, culebras - but that has a smaller effect on the smoking experience.
Tobacco is the first consideration.
