How to Choose a Cigar or High Quality Pipe Tobacco

Back in the good old days a man or woman with a cigar in hand was held in high esteem every debutante or bachelor of the moment celebrated smoking a stick while sipping champagne. Windy City Cigars has got the best tobacco for pipes on their website, please check it.

Although, to be candid more of the latter than former; but these were different times ladies. Today, it’s a different world and equality in the broadest sense now works for all cigar smokers, regardless of gender. 

A deep dive into cigar history: a young Winston Churchill who was on a mission to prove his personal DNA visited Cuba and fell in love with Cuban cigars and lifestyle was defined accordingly. 

Every man worth his stuff thought smoking a cigar while sampling booze du jour after or between meals was the right way to live. And, Churchill, well the Churchill cigar today reflects his name, sense of style and character. 

Let’s say you are embracing the cigar lifestyle and walking into your local neighborhood smoke shop or a club with a vast walk in humidor. Here are things you need to know so you can impress them with your knowledge. 

Must Know Cigar Terms for every Consumer: Male or Female BTW

• Everything starts with the “head” of a cigar. This is the end you put in your mouth, it’s sealed and you will have to use a cigar cutter or guillotine to trim off the tip. Your teeth: don’t even think about it. 
• The “foot “is the side of the cigar you light using a good butane. 
• The “filler” refers to the actual tobacco that makes up the bulk of your cigar. It’s usually a dried and fermented tobacco. 
• The “wrapper” is the external layer of your cigar, with a variation in color from light to dark and a great deal of the taste of your cigar comes from the cigar wrapper. 

 

How to Choose a Cigar?

You can spend the next few years Googling premium cigar. And in many cases, checking out a local cigar club is a great way to start your exploration. Every club worth their salt is going to have a humidor, ranging from something simple that holds 50-100 cigars or a more exotic humidor that maintains the optimum level of moisture inside the tobacco that makes up your cigar. 

Every humidor balances being too wet or too dry: high humidity produces rot and a cigar that is too dry is going to lose its core taste and aromatic properties. 

If you are a cigar newby we’d tell you to avoid a higher priced cigar – you aren’t really going to appreciate the delicacies of a higher end cigar and you will be wasting money. And price, that’s a bad place to start when you are selecting a cigar. There are a ton of lower cost cigars that are under $5-10 per stick that are great tasting cigars. 

Understand cigar construction: roll a stick between your fingers, it should not feel lumpy and the body of the cigar shouldn’t have a rough texture (it should be smooth to the touch). 

As you smoke a cigar the ash should always mirror the shape of the actual cigar; if not, you are smoking something that may not be the best quality.

If Starting Out Consider Selecting a well known Cigar Brand

In most cases a good well established cigar brand like Rocky Patel, Acid, Arturo Fuente, Cohiba, Davidoff and or Alec Bradley (we carry hundreds of cigar brands) is a great place to start. For many of you, it’s virtually impossible to understand the quality of the tobacco in a cigar and well know cigar brand is a great place to start. 

For good reason, bigger cigar brands are buying tobacco in bulk and/or on a regular basis. They have “local” tobacco buyers all over the world who know their stuff. A smaller less established cigar manufacturer has a harder time getting their hands of good quality cigar tobacco and/or providing a consistent high quality cigar.

Finally, don’t buy a box of cigars right of the bat. You are much better off tasting and testing some finite number of cigars at different price points and from multiple brands to understand what has lasting appeal to you. And, like everything in life, determining what tastes good to you is a matter of individual preferences. 

Most of you have no idea what kind of wine you preferred until you sampled a broad number of wines and choosing a cigar is similar to the wine tasting process most of you went through. 

Regardless, if you have questions about an facet of selecting a premium cigar or if you are just taking the plunge, please reach out via our toll free number and let one of our cigar smokers here in the office talk to you about selecting the right cigar that’s going to satisfy your tastes!

Learn more:

America’s Storied History with Booze and Pipe Tobacco