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23 August 2017

What ingredients go into a cigar?

Before you smoke a cigar, you should really know what actually goes into them. When you can answer this question, you can begin assessing the quality of specific cigars with a more analytical and educated viewpoint. Most cigars consist of three elements, the filler tobacco, a binder leaf and the outer wrapper.

For cigar smokers just starting out, it’s critical that you can identify the differences between handmade and machine made cigars. Cigars that are made by hand normally use a ‘long filler’ tobacco, which are leaves that run the whole length of a cigar. They combined manually through the filler, binder and wrapper, creating an interlinked and enjoyable cigar.

The cigars that come from machines combine a short filler tobacco, which usually scraps or pieces of tobacco, with a binder or wrapper. Due to the nature of how these machines work (stronger force in manufacturing), the tobacco and wrapper is normally a bit stronger to withstand the pressure, though are made with a variety of flavours, strengths and textures.

There are a few brands that actually combine machine bunching with hand rolled wrappers, giving it the name ‘hand-rolled’ rather than ‘hand-made’.

Quality of tobaccos and the way in which they are blended more often than not will be the main influencer in how high quality the smoke will be. In the filler, ‘ligero leaves’ provide power with ‘seco’ leaves, with milder flavour and ‘volado’ – ensuring an even burn. This gives a balanced flavour, especially when combined with a binder and wrapper.