Cigar Prices Vary Greatly

Why are cigar prices so different?
The way the cigar is made is the first reason that prices are so different. The least expensive kinds that you find at corner stores and drugstores are machine-rolled with short filler. Short filler does not run the entire length of the cigar, and may even be shredded. The wrappers on these cheap cigars are also of a lower grade quality. They lack the fine aging and curing methods of the more premium brands.

Fine cigars and premium cigars are an entirely different matter. These are made with whole length tobacco. Both the filler and the wrapper run the entire length of the cigar. Both are carefully cultivated, and the wrapper is painstakingly cured and treated to imbue it with a number of special scents and tastes.

Torcedores, or cigar rollers, hand-roll premium cigars, and they work especially hard to make certain that each and every cigar in the box looks and feels identical to its counterparts.

This is why premium cigar prices are so high—not only does it take longer to make the tobacco, but it takes longer for the most experienced employees in the factory to do their jobs rolling it.

What is the number one determining factor in cigar price?
The makeup of the tobacco is the number one determinant in price. Tobacco for filler, binder, and wrapper are all grown in specific countries and often specific regions of a country. Fine tobacco must be aged a certain way, and every manufacturer has its secret recipes for making the most world renowned brands.

Cigar prices can also be affected by fancy packaging. If you buy cedar or mahogany boxes, then expect to pay more.

What is the general range of cigar prices in a typical cigar store?
You can expect to pay as little as $1 a piece to over $20 a piece on finer brands. To get the best cigar prices, you really need to get a full box of cigars. If you are new to cigar smoking, try experimenting with the different types, prices, and brands to get a feel for what is offered before you buy anything in a large quantity or at an exorbitant price.

Is high cost a guarantee of premium quality?
No. High cigar prices are not always an indication of premium cigar quality. There are always retailers, both online and in brick and mortar establishments, that will charge more than is fair for certain products. Also, sometimes retailers have the very best of intentions, but they have no way of verifying their sources.

That’s why it’s always best to do business with an entity like www.seriouscigars.com that is BBB certified and that knows both its sources and the level of quality of each and every cigar in its inventory.

What are the highest cigar prices?
The most famous and well-loved cigars appreciated the world over can possibly cost hundreds of dollars. This depends on their origin, what type of tobacco was used, what was done to it, and how long it was aged.

Fine Cigars-True Works of Art That Do Not Have to Cost a Lot of Money to be Enjoyed

A fine cigar is a work of art.
Fine cigars are always rolled by hand. This requires a great deal of skill and experience, so only the most veteran of torcedores is employed to make the best cigars. They must pack the cigar evenly so that it will burn smoothly, and the must wrap the cigar in such a way that the wrapper makes an even spiral around the filler.

How is a fine cigar rolled?
Torcedores work in small factories with very simple setups. They sit at small tables and choose anywhere from 2 to 6 leaves to use as filler. These are rolled together in a bunch, which is then rolled into a binder leaf. The wrapper then goes around the binder to hold everything in place and to put the final, finishing touches on the flavor and the aroma.

How much should a fine cigar cost?
Some costs a great deal of money because of brand reputation, but there are a good many that cost between 3 and 5 dollars.

What types of fillers are used in fine cigars?
Fillers are made from a blend of different parts of the tobacco plant. These parts are the ligero, which come from the top of the plant, are very robust. Ligero must be aged for a minimum of three years before being used. The second type of leaf is seco, which means dry, and which comes from the middle of the plant. Volado leaves come from the lower part of the plant and help cigars burn smooth and even.

Long filler is used in the most premium cigars. In other fine cigars, medium and short filler may also be used. Sometimes a blend is used to add variety to taste and aroma.

What type of wrapper is used to make a fine cigar?
The best wrapper tobacco is usually grown in Connecticut, Cameroon, Cuba and The Dominican Republic. You may be surprised to learn this, but as much as 75 percent of the cigar’s taste comes from the wrapper.

What type of taste characterizes a fine cigar?
The best way to say this is, “ a taste that leaves an impression on your mouth.” After a mild cigar you will have a soft impression where the taste and aroma gently linger on the tongue and throat. A full-bodied cigar, on the other hand, will leave a full, satisfying feeling in your mouth and throat after you have finished smoking.

What is the texture of a quality cigar?
It will be characterized by a slightly oily texture and a lustrous sheen. It feels firms to the touch.

Do I need really need to use a cigar humidor?
Yes. Cigar humidification is an absolute must when it comes to preserving the taste and aroma of a cigar. Even the very best cigars will last for no more than a week if you do not store them in a humidor. Once your cigar dries out, it will burn too fast, taste stale, and possible even fall apart

What Makes a Premium Cigar Truly PREMIUM?

What is a premium cigar?
Premium cigars are always made by hand, and when you look at two premium cigars of the same type, they are consistent from one to the next. It takes a great deal of skill to roll such a cigar in order to make certain that that it will burn smoothly and at just the right rate.

What type of filler is used in premium cigars?
Long filler is used. Long filler is made from full leaves that run the entire length of the cigar. They are carefully picked, carefully handled, stored, and aged intact. Aging is the most important component to this process. Just like fine wine, fine tobacco must go through a carefully timed and monitored process to truly offer the level of excellence that justifies a cigar being called “premium.”

In most cases too, a single country of origin, such as Cuba, Honduras, or Cost Rica, is used exclusively to make the filler in a specific brand or line of cigars. This, again, guarantees that the taste of each and every cigar in the box will be consistent with that of the previous one smoked.

What kinds of wrappers are used in premium cigars?
The wrapper is a high-quality tobacco leaf that is wrapped around the finished bunch and binder. A truly excellent wrapper will have no visible veins on its leaves, and no blemishes of any kind. The colors of wrappers are generated by the aging process. Basically, there are three shades of wrappers used in premium cigar rolling. The first is CANDELA or DOUBLE CLARO, which is a light yellow-green shade. It is known for the mildest flavor and the sharpest aroma. The second shade is NATURAL, also known as ENGLISH MARKET SELECT. It is a light or medium brown. The taste is more rounded, as they say, and the aroma more laid back. Most aficionados prefer the EMS shade in their cigars. Finally, the MADURO wrapper is the darkest in color (being sometimes almost mahogany black) and has the fullest aroma and taste.

What type of taste is a premium cigar known for?
There are many different flavors that have become famous with cigar aficionados over the years. Experienced smokers generally agree that the best tobaccos have a distinctively mild or rich taste with subtle overtones of additional tastes as well. Some of these subtle overtones come from the wrappers as well as the fillers.

Popular flavors include spice, leather, earth, toast, nut, berry, almond, pepper, woods, and even grass. Yes, all of these are aromatic overtones that an experienced smoker not only likes, but genuinely loves.

As a general principle too, lighter colored wrappers are characterized by milder flavors and fewer aftertastes. Darker wrappers are normally much richer in flavor. This is not a hard fast rule though. It really all depends on the manufacturer and the blend more than anything else, because a truly premium cigar is a masterpiece that defies stereotype.

What type of aroma characterizes a premium cigar?
Aroma comes from additives that create scents like apple, orange, cherry, chocolate, coffee, and whisky. Properly storing a cigar in a humidor is necessary to keep it in the very best condition.

Cigar Rolling

It is the process of rolling cigar filler in a cigar binder and wrapper to produce the finished product of a fine, premium cigar.

The best cigars are still hand rolled. Cigar rolling by hand is an art as much as it is a skill. In fact, the Torcedor, the old term for cigar roller, was regarded in the early days as being more of an artist than an employee.

You might even say it’s almost like a craft whose very practice commands a respect beyond assembly and production. It takes years of on-the-job training to become a Master roller.

For the new craftsmen, it takes at least a year for a roller just to learn the basics of cigar rolling. These basics appear remarkably simple at face value. This is not the case. Each step requires pinpoint accuracy and must be done correctly in order for each brand of cigar to have its own unique flavor, burn, aroma, and true quality appeal.

The roller must learn to take the filler and pack it evenly for the cigar to burn smoothly. The wrapper must also wind about the cigar in a spiral. Both of these aspects of cigar rolling require insight, intuition, and skill with the hands that does not come overnight.

Hand cigar makers like this sit at small tables in cigar factories. He or she has a tray with sorted tobacco leaves on it and enough room for cigar rolling. The first step in the process is the selection of the leaves for the filler.

They must be placed on top of one another and rolled in a bunch. The binder then goes around this bunch cylindrically, and the half-finished cigars are then placed in wooden molds that keep their shape until they can be wrapped.

The binder, though a flavorless part of the cigar, is crucial to rolling the more famous and sought-after brands because it literally helps hold the cigar together.

Cigar rolling requires all rollers to keep the tobacco moist—especially the wrapper—and to use chavetas, which are specially designed crescent-shaped knives to shape the filler and wrapper leaves quickly and accurately.

After the partially finished cigars are placed in a wooden mold, the press is turned by hand until the roller feels that enough pressure has been placed on the tobacco leaves. This gives the cigars their shape.

After this, the rollers in training carefully take the cigars from the molds and pass them to the Master roller, who then completes the finishing touches of cigar rolling and puts the head on the cigar.

A Master will produce hundreds of cigars a day that look almost identical.

Prior to the cigars being aged, an examiner inspects the cigars for imperfections and checks them for quality assurance.

Cigars

What are cigars?
By definition, a cigar is a tight roll of cured, fermented tobacco leaves that can be ignited and smoked. The intention of smoking a cigar is to draw the smoke into the mouth only (not the lungs) so the flavor of the tobacco can be tasted and savored.

How are they different from cigarettes?
A cigar is different from a cigarette. Cigarettes are made of finely cut tobacco rolled up in thin pieces of paper. Cigars are made entirely from tobacco leaves (wrapper) and filler.

Cigarette tobacco contains all types of additives and is intended to be inhaled into the lungs as a stimulant.

Smoking a cigar is more like being a wine taster. You are after the palate—not the effect.

Where is cigar tobacco grown?
The tobacco used to make cigars is grown primarily in Latin America in countries such as Brazil, Cuba, The Dominican Republic, Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua. It is also grown in other parts of the world as well in nations such as Sumatra, The Philippines, Indonesia, and Cameroon.

Some cigar tobacco is also grown in the Easter portion of the United States.

What makes a good cigar?
Aficionados agree that the tobacco and the method of construction make a great cigar great.

First and foremost, it has to be handmade.

Next, it has to have the right amount of filler. Fewer leaves in the filler means it will burn more quickly and it will smoke faster. This may or may not be good depending on the point of view of the smoker. If it is under filled, that means it probably has too many air pockets in the filler and simply burns too quickly.

On the other hand, if the filler is overfilled, then it will be much harder to draw smoke. This is why a balanced amount of filler really needs to be carefully placed in each and every roll. This will ensure that when the cigar is let, it will burn evenly at the anticipated rate.

If there is an uneven burn, then the rolling process was probably not done correctly.

What are some other qualities of fine cigars?
Believe it or not, another sign of quality is the ash. There is nothing more annoying than ash falling off at inconvenient and unpredictable times. Instead, you should be able to move the cigar about without ashing all over your clothes or the floor.

The texture of a fine cigar feels both springy and firm to the touch. It also feels smooth and has only one shade of leaves in the wrapper.

What does cigar tobacco taste like?
It should be smooth and flavorful. It should never be harsh or burn the mouth. The flavor of the cigar is determined by a number of factors, such as the aging and curing of tobacco, and what is done to ferment it. Fermenting tobacco improves the flavor and also preserves it.

Additional flavors can also be added to the tobacco, as you can see by simply scrolling through the many brands advertised here on Serious Cigars.