Cigars

“If smoking cigars is not permitted in heaven, I won't go.” —Mark Twain

My mother smoked St. Moritz cigarettes for a while and naturally, my first taste of smoking was of a purloined St. Moritz filtered under the dining room table of the house on Edo Crescent one Saturday afternoon. I turned blue from puffing too fast; I loved it.

I didn't smoke for another twenty years when I took up smoking Camels. I smoked those for two years and stopped, although I'm not above “bumming” a cigarette from time to time (rarely, very rarely). Smoking a cigarette however, is a very different sort of thing than smoking a cigar and smoking a good cigar is an unearthly pleasure.

“A good Cuban cigar closes the doors to the vulgarities of the world.” —Franz Liszt

This is because of the way a cigar is built, not of the pressed, packed machine-cut mulch that goes into cigarettes, but of whole leaves, usually of three types. One type becomes the filler, the other the binder and finally, the wrapper. Each cigar is hand made (hecho a mano) and the lore is that Cubans were rolled on the smooth thighs of Cuban virgins. The only Cuban I ever tried (a Cohiba churchill, thanks S) certainly smoked that way, but alas, that particular bit of fantasy is just that.

The fact there are no filters means there is no inhaling. You will pay dearly if you inhale cigar smoke! No, the entire idea behind smoking cigars is to slow down. To relax, to perform the cutting and lighting rituals, and then to puff, to taste. In other words, it's very much like drinking a good Barolo or Claret and very much unlike the drive-by nicotine fix, “wham-bam, thank you ma'am” suck-it addict experience of cigarette smoking.

One then, doesn't really smoke a cigar, one tastes it, one senses it really: the tactile feel of the tobacco leaf in hand and on lips, the heaviness of the smoke in the mouth; the sight of the graceful, curvy, thick white smoke, the sheen of a good Cameroonian maduro wrapper; the taste of it all; and of course, the glorious aroma and pungent fragrance; and finally, the auditory aspects: sighs of contentment and the curious protective effect smoking a cigar has on the ears of husbands around the world when the missus starts her yappin' ;-)

(Okay, okay, I made that last part up.)

“A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.” —Rudyard Kipling

The sensual part of smoking is all well and good, but there will come a time when the smoker wants to have a few around, on-hand as it were for sundry reasons: celebrating the birth of a baby (boy and girl), a new house, a new car, a new girlfriend, a new wife, or both simultaneously, and of course just for the hell of it.

The very few times one shouldn't be smoking a cigar is out in the open, at a baseball game, walking the streets, etc. This negates the very reason for smoking and boils down to simply showing off and ticking off lesser beings for polluting their air. Whatever: it's crass and wasteful to smoke cigars in the open. The wind whipping around the cigar will cause it to burn too fast and too hot; the wonderful perfume of cigar smoke gets lost, wasted, in the same wind.

“The most futile and disastrous day seems well spent when it is reviewed through the blue, fragrant smoke of a Havana cigar.” —Evelyn Waugh

When that august occasion arrives, the smoker will quickly realize that since cigars are organic, they require care. A cigar, in order to smoke well, needs moisture and being hygroscopic, will dry out in a dry climate or absorb moisture in a wet one. A damp cigar will not burn properly, a dry cigar will burn too hot. These extremes are to be avoided, of course, and that calls for something called a humidor.

Another lore of cigar smoking is that every cigar pines for the climate it was born in, the 70% humidity and70-degrees of Cuba's Vuelta Abajo. There is a kernel of truth in this. The Ultimate Cigar Storage Manifesto by Steve Saka is a good great introduction to the storage and care of these magnificent articles.

“Gentlemen, you may smoke.” —King Edward VII