There is a lot of talk of whether you need to find a popular label to get a good smoke. Well, here is my take…

Large cigar makers have the most consistent tobacco. They often have first rights to thousands of acres of tobacco. So, if you are looking for a consistent good smoke, the better-known labels may be your best bet.

With that said however, there are plenty of specialty brands that are usually good due to their connections. Brands such as Rocky, Avo, or Butera (to name a few) often have consistently good smokes.

Don’t be afraid to try a non-name brand, just try one single stick as oppose to committing to a box.

But wait.  Let’s start with the basics and not get ahead of ourselves.  

The first thing you need is a cigar that will produce dense smoke.  Why?  Smoke rings are delicate and if your cigar is producing light, ‘airy’ smoke, it will be difficult to get your ring to come together and stay together after it leaves your lips.

The second thing you need is a nice, calm environment.  Not for your nerves – for the smoke ring!  Moving air will disrupt the fragile cohesion, while still air will allow a smoke ring to grow to its full glory and linger for a while afterwards.

Okay, you’ve got the right cigar and the right room.  Now you need the right attitude:  practice makes perfect.  Let’s get ringing:

1. Draw a thick puff of smoke into your mouth and hold it there.  (It’s not necessary to puff out your cheeks like a chipmunk)

2. Place your tongue on the bottom of your mouth and pull it back slightly to block your throat passage 

3. Open your mouth slowly (so you don’t create any unnecessary air flow that will disturb the smoke) and form it into the loose, rounded shape of the letter “O.”

4. Be sure to open your mouth and jaw, not just your lips.  You can’t make a good smoke ring by puckering up and making a kiss-face or fish-face.

5. Now, here’s the tricky part:  Curl the tip of your tongue down, and pull your tongue all the way back and push the smoke out of your mouth with your tongue.  Use your tongue in a gentle, piston type motion:  short bursts, with a slight recoil (think of the way a car piston works). 

The biggest factor in blowing good smoke rings is practice.  But that’s half the fun!

If you are lucky enough to get your hands on any of these, find a nice quiet area – or a loud one with friends – and enjoy!

The 2009 List!

1. Cohiba Esplindidos

2. H Uphmann Magnum 50

3. San Cristobal La Habana House Muralla

4. H Uphmann Number 2

5. Trinidad Extra Robusto

6. Cohiba Robusto

7. Hoya Monterrey Epicure Especial

8. Romeo Julita Short Churchill

9. Trinidad Fundadoras

10. Cohiba Maduro 5 Magicos

UPDATE: Christopher J. Yarosz of DoubleGun cigars wanted to add a couple to the list and I think they are worth mentioning…

San Miguel y Ramirez and Maneda De Cuba

Compare this list to 2008

So an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  Don’t let a good cigar go bad.  Read up on humidors and storage options on this website.

TREATMENT OPTIONS

There are several ways of treating dry cigars, depending on their condition. If a cigar has become dry and the wrapper has not cracked and unraveled, then it can be restored. But this must be done slowly and patiently.   

If the wrapper has actually broken, then the cigar should be discarded. And if it has completely dried out, it will fall apart between your fingers regardless of how gentle and careful you are, so restoration would be impossible. 

Your first step is to remove your dry stogies from their cellophane wrappers, or cedar/aluminum tubes.  If they’re not super-dry, the entire cigar box (with its lid open) may be placed inside a large walk-in humidor or any location where they can slowly be reintroduced to dampness – ideally 70% humidity.  (After two or three days the top and bottom rows should be interchanged and should remain in that position for another two or three days)

In 4-6 days, you can remove the cigars from their box and expose them to the full humidity of the humidor.  To combat small water bubbles that may appear under the wrapper, rotate the cigars a quarter-turn every 2 days.  Continue this process for as long as necessary – possibly up to three weeks.  

When the wrappers look even and the body feels smooth, and when there is only a gentle crackling sound when you press your cigars between your fingers, it’s time to return your cigars to their original box.  After treatment it is best to let cigars rest for 6-12 months to allow the three components (filler, binder and wrapper) to re-equilibrate before smoking. Just check on their condition every three months. 

Quick tip:  For cigars that aren’t too dried-out, restoration can sometimes be achieved by simply wrapping the closed box in a damp (not wet) towel for about two weeks.

Get ready to pay a bit more for your favorite smoke. On February 4th, 2009 President Obama signed into law the expansion of the State Children’s Insurance Health Program (SCHIP).  This program provides health and dental insurance to children and pregnant mothers who do not qualify for Medicaid but cannot afford health insurance.

The SCHIP program will be funded largely by increasing Federal taxes on all tobacco products. Cigars will be hit by as much as a 700% increase.  

The program goes into effect April 1st, 2009. The increase will be from 4.9 cents per cigar to 40 cents per cigar.  The rumor is that this tax is levied and paid at the time of importation, this will cause all cigar prices to increase anywhere from 40 cents to $1 per cigar by the time the tax reaches the final consumers.

In a nutshell, the bigger they are the longer they smoke (like you had to go to a Cigar site to figure that out, huh?). Ok, ok, here are few benchmarks…

Presidente (8” – 10”) – about 1 to 1 ½ hours.

Double Corona, Churchill, Lonsdale (7 ½” – 8”) – about 45 minutes to an hour.

Corona Grandes, Corona Extra, Rubusto, Belicoso, Pyramid (5”-7”) – about 30 – 45 minutes.

Petite Corona, Culebra, Ascot – under 30 minutes.

The two words are interchange and in either case come from the island of Cuba. The term “Made in Havana” is largely due to the fact that most Cuban cigars are made in or around Havana. 

Did you know you can easily create your own flavored cigars? Just take a few mild smokes (no maduro’s) and put them in a tight sealing container (no need for a humidor for this one). A tupperware bin works great.

It needs to be large enough to hold the cigars and a shot of your favorite alchohol (brandy and cognac work very well). 

Put the shot glass in the container (DON’T pour it on the cigars) you just want the liqueur to evaporate. 

That is it. Seal the container and put it in a dark place (the back of the closet it good). It should only take a couple weeks for the liqueur to evaporate. You are ready to smoke! Enjoy!

The name Punch was taken from an English humor magazine (and a very popular puppet show)

The character ”Punch” smoked and stogie and repeatedly hit everyone with his club. You may vaguely recall the names “Punch and Judy” as they were seldem apart. 

Sit back, light up your favorite smoke and consider, perhaps for the first time, the lowly band that encircles your cigar. A simple paper ring of no consequence to you… something to be discarded without thought. Yet for some it is an object of great debate, its origin shrouded in mystery and romance.

Cubans approach the history of cigars with the intensity that New Yorkers reserve for following baseball or the stock market. At a recent conference in Havana, four speakers argued fine points of the history of bands, labels and marketing. One, Orlando Arteaga, president of the Havana Vitofilic (cigar band) Society regaled the crowd with the most popular of these conflicting legends. 

It’s not just the stuff of legends that occupies cigar smokers. Many are avid collectors of cigar bands; some search out the historical, and others even hoard the bands of the cigars they smoke daily. Finally, there are few debates over etiquette that can evoke more vehement opinions than whether or not the band should remain on the cigar while it’s being smoked. But each element of debate or discussion only fuels more conversation and are all part of the romance of the cigar.

The Chain-Smoking Russian Queen

Once upon a time–in Russia 200 years ago–lived a rather bossy queen who was known as Catherine the Great. It’s said she ordered her cigars wrapped in silk to protect her royal fingers from tobacco stains. Thereafter, silken cigar rings were adopted by all in imitation of the queen. And so, the tale goes, the cigar band was born.

“Un cuento de hadas por ninos,” [a fairy tale for children] says Angel Pereira Reyes, one of Cuba’s prominent collector-historians, who finds no evidence that Catherine smoked Cuban or any other cigars. Yet maybe a fanatical Catherine was worried over nicotine stains (implying a rather large consumption) and maybe she did order her cigars to be wrapped in silk. But that order would have been carried out by someone in her court–not someone in Havana. Her majesty’s idiosyncrasies would have had little influence on the manufacturing processes of the tiny Cuban-cigar industry 5,000 miles away.

Maybe Catherine worried over stained fingers, but it’s unlikely in light of a well-documented disregard for cleanliness of body, hair and clothing among eighteenth-century royalty notorious for bathing monthly. The late nineteenth-century originator of this story apparently mistook bands for the color-coded silk ribbons used to bundle cigars into wheels, added one queen and devised a romantic but unlikely legend that credits the Russians with inventing the cigar band.

The Case of the Dirty White Gloves

England’s claim to the cigar band is based on fastidious nineteenth-century dandies’ horror at soiled white gloves. The idea of a proud Cuban don saying “let’s spend an extra $5 per crate to put paper rings on our product so some simpering English snuff taker can keep his gloves clean” just doesn’t ring true, say Cuban historians, since that would imply that Cuban cigars were leaky, dirty or chemically doctored.

In fairness, it should be pointed out that Zino Davidoff wrote in The Connoisseur’s Book of the Cigar (McGraw-Hill, 1969, 92 pages, $25) that nineteenth-century Spanish cigars had wrappers colored with a chicory-shaded gum, which could possibly stain the fingers of the unwary. Since Davidoff seems to be the only source of this informational tidbit, it is doubtful that the practice was widespread. Moreover, wrapper fashions changed every generation, and by the mid-nineteenth century, dark wrappers were no longer fashionable.

Abdon Gonzales, the current director of the Instituto Investigaciones del Tabaco in Havana calls this a cuento de viejas [old wives' tale], and says that properly rolled and smoked cigars don’t stain fingers. He emphasizes that his ancestors wouldn’t have cared what a handful of upper-class fops on the other side of the world thought, especially since the English smoked few cigars in comparison with their prodigious intake of pipe tobacco and snuff, both more likely to stain their white gloves.

Approach the white-gloves theory from your own experience. How many smokers have you seen actually holding a cigar by the band? Compare your answer to the evidence in the world’s largest archive of photos, paintings and engravings related to cigars from the 1700s to the present: hundreds of depictions of cigar smokers but nary a one with fingers wrapped around the band. Note, too, that portraits of smokers usually depict them with their gloves off while indulging in the sacred weed.