Selecting Your Cigar

Selecting Your Cigar

1. Pay no attention to fancy packages, such as metal or glass tubes. They usually just increase the price of the product. Often they conceal the cigars so you cannot judge their quality. However, the tubed cigar is great to throw in your golf bag if you are only carrying a couple of cigars out on the course.
2. Cigars should have a good appearance.
3. Green spots represent where the rain splashed dirt upon the leaves, thus keeping the sun from coloring them.
4. Cedar wood or boite nature boxes are often used for packaging. Cedar will "marry" very well with cigars. Tobacco assumes the characteristics of any material in close proximity, so careful selection of packing materials is important to maintain the cigar's aroma.

   The boxes will provide you with information on the cigar's country of origin. This information is usually stamped on the bottom of the box. This does not mean, however, that all the tobaccos used in the construction of the cigar came from that country.

   The traditional packaging for cigars is 25 per box. The most common arrangement is 2 rows, 13 cigars on top and 12 on the bottom. An 898 box is packaged in three rows, with 8 on the top, 9 in the middle, and 8 on the bottom. Remove the first cigar very carefully from the box. A cellophane tab or a ribbon should help make this process a little easier. The rest of the cigars can then be removed without difficulty.

   Some cigars are box-pressed, a process that flattens or squares the sides of the cigars so they are no longer round. Round cigars are not box-pressed. Because round cigars are not compressed, they may be easier to draw.

5. In the United States, cigars often come in cellophane or tubes to keep the cigars moist. Remove the cellophane before you put your cigar in your humidor so it will continue to marry in flavor. Uncellophaned cigars are more European. They deteriorate easily outside humidification, so they should be kept in a cigar case or plastic cigar bag when outside a humidor.

Cellophaned cigars will only last a few days to a week outside humidification. In the sun, they will be gone in hours. A cellophaned cigar in an unopened box or a cigar in an unopened individual tube can last a few weeks.