CIGAR 101
​Selecting a Cigar
Choosing the perfect cigar for your occasion can seem very daunting if you walk into a cigar shop for the first time. Ask the staff what they recommend based on your tastes (mild, medium, full). Your taste can change throughout the day, so you may want a very mild cigar in the morning and ramp up to a more fuller-bodied cigar in the afternoon or evening. When selecting a cigar, never let the cigar touch your nose when smelling an un-cellophaned cigar, and handle un-cellophaned cigars by the band only. Never take cigars out of the cellophane to smell them.
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Preparing Your Cigar
When preparing your cigar, cut the cap with a genuine cigar cutter (whatever cutter variety you prefer) - using anything else can cause issues with your cigar, including unraveling, which cuts your cigar smoking session short.
When lighting (called toasting the foot), take your time, and keep the flame as far away from the foot as possible while still being able to char the tobacco. If you use a torch lighter, you can easily ruin a cigar by holding the flame too close. Hold the cigar in your hand, not your mouth, so you can see what you’re doing. When it begins to glow red, gently blow on the foot to spread the heat across the entire foot. This may require a little extra toasting, especially if the cigar has a lot of oily ligero tobacco in the blend. Those leaves are usually the black areas that don’t take right away to the flame.
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Smoking Time
As a general rule of thumb when you're starting out, you should draw on the cigar roughly about once every minute or two. Doing so lets the cigar cool down a little, and allows you to pick-up the flavors and aromas the blender intended. Besides, cigar smoking is supposed to be relaxing. Take your time and savor it - otherwise, you may find the cigar isn’t living up to its reputation.
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Ashing
A lot of cigar smokers get a kick out of seeing how long they can get the ash on their cigar, however, a 1/2 to one inch of ash is just about right, acting as a filter allowing the cigar to smoke a tad cooler, and allowing you to observe the full flavor. Once you get to that one-inch point, gently tap the ash into an ashtray (please never on the floor) as they are built to hold hot ashes.
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Putting Out Your Cigar
Most of the time, a cigar will start to turn bitter within that last inch or two. If you continue to relight it to get every penny out of the cigar, go for it, but it may only get worse. Moreover, if a cigar turns bitter early on and doesn’t change or gets worse, you should just put it down and let it go out. It’s not going to improve no matter how long you stay with it, so let it go. When you do let it go, simply lay the butt in the ashtray saddle and it will extinguish itself. Snuffing it out only causes it to release a sour odor and leaves an ugly mess.
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​Handle Your Cigars with Care
A cigar, while being a disposable commodity, should always be handled properly as it was manufactured with great care. Once a cigar is bent, cracked or dried out, it won't give you the fully intended experience. Check with us regarding traveling humidors and cigar cases.
