New Cigar Smokers Guide

[ValeTudoGuy]

Picking the Cigar:

Once you have chosen which brand and size of cigar you want to smoke, your going to want to pick a good example to actually light up.
To do this you going to want to check the cigar over.

Firstly visually inspect the cigar for any cracks or other types of damage. Next you will want to gently feel the cigar, lightly squeezing it along its length. Your looking for hollow areas or hard knots (Plugs) many good cigar retailers will help you find a good example and some will even replace a plugged cigar.

Storage:

Cigars need to be kept in a humidity controlled environment (Humidor) to keep them at their best. If you don't have one of these yet, don't buy too many cigars as they won't be at their best when you get to smoke them.

Keep cigars in the sealed bags the tobacconist will put them in for you, until your ready to smoke them. And don't be tempted to buy more than your going to smoke until your set up for storing them.

Ageing:

In the world of CC's age is often considered an important aspect. With older cigars being considered to have improved in flavour. In fact Young CC's can often be described and being (Sick) and not prime for smoking.

NC's on the other hand are made to be smoked from day one and it is often argued that in general they don't improve with age.

[ValeTudoGuy]

Brands:
Currently produced Cuban cigar brands include:
Bolivar, Cohiba, Cuaba, Diplomaticos, El Rey del Mundo, Fonseca, H. Upmann, Hoyo De Monterray, Juan Lopez, La Gloria Cubana, Montecristo, Partagas, Por Larranaga, Punch, Quai D'Orsay, Rafael Gonzalez, Ramon Allones, Romeo Y Julieta, Sant Luis Rey, San Cristobel, Sancho Panza, Trinidad and Vagueros.

Currently Produced NC brands are almost too numerous to name but some common and well regarded ones are:
5 Vegas, Alec Bradley, A. Fuente, Ashton, Brick House, Camacho, CAO, Davidoff, Diesel, Don Pepin Garcia, Dunhill, Liga Privada, Macanudo, My Father, NUB/Oliva, Padila, Padron, Perdomo, Rocky Patel and Tatuaje.

[ValeTudoGuy]

Beginners guide:

The Cigar
Broadly speaking there are two kinds of Cigar, Cuban (CC) and Non Cuban (NC).
In general amongst cigar circles conversations are normally geared towards the enjoyment of high quality hand made cigars, please note that a cigar produced with tobacco hailing from one country will often be called a "Puro" though this term is often simply used as a default name for CC's.

Though the discussion of machine made offerings does take place and is not generally frowned upon.
Along with Cuba other counties with strong cigar production are The Dominican Republic, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Though other countries do produce cigars also such as the USA, Indonesia, Holland and to a much lesser extent France, though this list is not exhaustive.
You can further split cigars into Hand made and Machine made varieties. Common machine made cigars that you may be aware of are King Edwards and Henri Winterman, without trying to offend or start a debate these types of cigars are generally considered of lower quality than Hand rolled Cigars. Once upon a time Cuba produced quite a few machine made cigars but this trend has slowed and this is now reserved for the small tinned "Club" and "Mini" Cubans. So in relation to Cuban cigars, if you are buying a full sized Cuban you are fairly safe in your assumption that you are buying a Hand made product made of 100% quality tobacco which is something that can't always be said for their machine made cousins.

Construction of cigars is split into stages and this can be broken down to the Filler, Binder and Wrapper.

Filler: The filler is the inner most bundle of tobacco that makes up the bulk of the cigar and can be described as Long or Short. In a long filler cigar the whole filler is made of intact rolled tobacco leaves where as in a short filler, it is made for cut up and re formed trimming.

Binder: This is the rough tobacco leaf that holds the filler together.

Wrapper: This is the high quality best looking smooth leaf that holds everything together. In some NC cigars this can be dyed to give a particular appearance or even flavoured. Though flavouring is a matter of personal preference flavoured cigars tend to not be appreciated by purists (Not always the case) yet flavoured cigars can account for the most expensive cigars available on the market.

Finally is the Cap, this is the section of the Wrapper that seals one end of the cigar, incidentally this is the end of the cigar which will need to be cut to put into your mouth. A cap can have multiple layers and a triple cap is often seen as a mark of a quality roller.

Now for shameless use of someone else's size, shape and colour picture (I hope it's not breaking copyright!) full credit goes to the owners of the picture and their brand is on it, I didn't make and don't own this picture.

image.jpg

http://www.cigaraffection.com/images...s_High_Res.jpg

[ValeTudoGuy]

I thought about doing this a while back and then forgot. Well I still think it's a good idea.

I will post up the bones of what I did previously, please suspend heavy criticism for a moment and bear in mind that this draft has been produced by someone relatively new (me).

I have no doubt that in my writings there will be mistakes, generalisations, opinions, contradictions and possibly more. But if we can tailor this and add info, I think this could be a good resource for people new to the hobby.

Marc