In a Puff of Smoke

When I sit on my patio at eight in the evening and light a cigar, I feel like the world has lifted off of my shoulders. Even if it’s just for a little while. There are many reasons why people smoke cigars. In my opinion, there are four different types of cigar smokers. The first, are people that do not care about the brand, or the flavors the cigar may have, or the construction. They don’t care about any of that. They only care about how they look when they have a stogie in their mouth.

The second type of cigar smokers are people who smoke for the nicotine rush. You can control the amount of nicotine you feel when you smoke a cigar, to an extent. If you have a stick that normally takes about one and half hours to smoke, and you smoke it in half that time, your nicotine buzz has practically doubled. This happens because the heated tobacco increases the nicotine effect with every puff - so the more you puff, the hotter it gets, the more nicotine you’ll feel.

The third type, are the crazy cigar nuts. They will know, or at least pretend to know, the difference between a cigar today, and the same cigar 50 years ago. They’ll also say that the one they smoked 50 years ago, was better.

The fourth and final type are people like me. We smoke for flavor. Flavor spirals and combinations can vary drastically from stick to stick. But until you’ve smoked them, you have no idea how they are or if you like them or not.

But even though I have four different categories of what types of cigar smokers there are in the world, every individual smoker has a reason that they smoke, and a story to how they got this hobby started.

For me, it’s a liberating experience. It’s a moment of peace and quiet, after a long day, or even if it’s a day of rest. I think about work a lot when I’m puffing on a cigar - just because I’m indulging in a few luxuries, doesn’t mean I’m not using that time wisely. Time is precious. But, time should be spent beautifully, too. It’s a moment that allows me to relive memories, and it often feels like I’m going back in time. It brings nostalgia and an involuntary smile to my face. I talk to friends that I haven’t seen in years. Most of them I used to see every single day during high school.

Those that know me personally know that I love food. I can talk about it for hours. And, when I have a cigar, I end up thinking about recipes and how they’d look on a plate. In my opinion, a cigar experience may be slightly lackluster, if you don’t experience tasting notes, or if you don’t have an interest in food or cooking at all. Food is important in cigars, but the connection may not be the way people usually think about it.

Allow me to explain. If you don’t taste, or smell, or feel the actual food, or scent, etc, how do you know you’re actually tasting or smelling the flavor or scent in the cigar? For example, if you’ve never tasted caramel, or plum, or cinnamon, or baker’s chocolate, etc, how do you know you’re tasting any of these notes in a cigar if you’ve never had them before? And, how do you know if you’re tasting, let’s say, dark chocolate or cocoa? You may not notice the difference if you’ve never had both. Almost every cigar smoker has a story when it comes to their very first cigar experience. Here’s mine, and it happened at Christmas, in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 2015.

Snowflakes were falling, and there were gusts of wind that made a negative five-degree night, seem a lot colder than it should’ve felt. Our friends from across the street walked on our snow-covered driveway to spend Christmas at ours, to bring in the festive cheer. I lived with five other housemates, and because the holidays were very short, we decided to spend the holidays together. While the other eight people decorated the living room and the tree, I was in the kitchen making that night’s dinner. The turkey was marinated in a sage, pink peppercorn, and orange brine overnight, and was ready to be roasted. It was first doused in a thyme and rosemary compound butter and stuck on a bed of carrots, zucchini, onions, and celery. The bird was roasted in the oven for two and a half hours, with an extra 15 minutes under the broiler, with a glaze made with bitter orange marmalade, honey, a splash of dark spiced rum, a few more knobs of butter, and a sprinkle of black truffle sea salt. A mixture of fresh and dried plump ruby red cranberries, with a combination of clementine peel, honey, and ground ginger, was gently simmering on the hob.

On the other side of the kitchen, one of my housemates that decided to help me, Emil, sliced a few pounds of potatoes and dropped them in salted lemon water, to stop the root vegetable from discoloring; while I, on the hob, made a delicious rich béchamel with butter, flour, mushrooms, onions, and garlic. The potatoes and béchamel were layered alternately, topped with parmesan and mozzarella cheese, and popped in the oven with the turkey. A friend of ours brought a green bean casserole for that night and will be warmed up just before the turkey goes in for its last 15 minutes.

I make tiramisu for the Christmas dessert every single year, and this year was no different. But, this year I asked every guest to bring Tupperware so that they could take it home for an indulgent breakfast the next day. It’s not called a “pick me up” for nothing. Tiramisu is a layered dessert, starting with a delicious velvety sweet mascarpone and amaretto cream. It is then dolloped on espresso dunked Ladyfingers and topped with a generous dusting of cocoa powder.

After a few hours, the whole house smelled divine, and once both the food and the decorations were ready, the other housemates helped to bring the food out to the table. From the moment people started to eat, till they finished, it was silent. I smiled when a few people got teary-eyed and said that my cooking reminded them of home. After dinner, we went to the Christmas tree and started opening our presents. I got a Santoku chef’s knife, a pair of leather gloves, and a cookbook by Rachel Allen. It was awesome. We were outside on the patio, talking, joking around, playing joyous Christmas carols, and drinking mulled wine that a friend of ours brought over.

After a while, Emil went up to his room and brought down a gift for all of us. It was a 10-count box of cigars. I believe they were Romeo Y Julieta Wide Churchills. 5⅛ x 55 Robusto-sized sticks. Even though I was preoccupied conversing with people at the time, I can remember the few flavors that stuck out.

It was very woody, but not all the way through. It was bright and syrupy at the beginning, it mellowed in the middle and then became almost ‘oaky’ at the end. There was nuttiness, but I couldn’t pinpoint the actual taste, and it had a sweetness too. At one point I could taste a floral honey sweetness, but it was fleeting, and a black pepper tingle on the tongue.

After that cigar moment, I’ve kept the hobby ever since because it intrigues me. You can have the same stick many times and every time you might find something new. Over the years, I’ve learned many things about cigar smoking, like how every single cigar is different. No one cigar smokes the same way. I’ve also realized that what I taste may be different from what you taste. Taste is subjective, and that’s ok. Also, if I say “I taste earth and grass,” it’s not like I’ve actually eaten compost, dirt, and soil. But it’s rather connotations of the taste and smell, like ‘earth’ is pertaining to the earthiness from mushrooms, like Creminis, Morels, or Porcinis, for example. And “grass” normally means the sweet scent you get from the grass after it rains. Tasting doesn’t always mean literal taste with the mouth but using the olfactory sense as a whole to taste.

What you like in a cigar may not be what I’d like in mine. For example, I like dessert-like sticks. Sticks that have chocolate, cocoa, caramel, baking spice, and coffee notes, speak to me much more than their woody, earthy, leathery, or black pepper 7 counterparts. The word “strength” on online cigar shops, usually speaks for both the body and the nicotine. But “strength’ is different to “body,” to me. Like wine, “body” talks about how much flavor you can taste. Is it difficult to specify the flavor, or can you pick it up right off the bat? And “strength” determines how much nicotine you feel. You can have a cigar that has a lot of body and no nicotine at all, and you can find sticks that are the other way around. Just depends on what you want or what you like.

And, if you find yourself in a cigar lounge, you’ll come to discover that the cigar community is one of the most open, friendly, and approachable communities out there. Most hobbies have a level of competition. Like sports, fashion, pop culture, video games, anime, fishing, camping, cooking, etc - every single hobby out there has an element of competition, except for cigars. You can smoke a cigar that I absolutely hate, and I’d still be happy for you because you’re smoking something that makes you happy.

There’s a product called “flavored cigars,” and many hardcore cigar smokers hate them because it’s not all-natural. Manufacturers add a sweet syrupy concoction on the cigar, and that adds a straight sugary taste to the smoke. “Acid” is a product line by Drew Estate, and is the most purchased cigar stick in the United States, partly because it’s flavored. Those “haters” will never smoke one themselves, but if you smoke one in front of them, they’ll be happy - because you’re happy. Judgment is rare, at least that’s what I’ve found in the cigar communities that I’ve been a part of. And, even if there is judgment, do what you do, man - and don’t care about what anybody else thinks or says.

You’ll also find out that most people think cigars are expensive. They’re not. It’s true, you can find cigars that cost $2,000 per stick, but you can find ones that cost $5.00 a pop, too. Also, the color of the cigar wrapper has nothing to do with how strong or how light the blend is. Unless it’s a Cuban cigar, because they have strict rules they have to follow or else they’ll get fined, the cigar companies in the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, 8 Honduras, the Caribbean, and the US, can do whatever they want. They can blend however they want, they can name their cigars differently, they can box it however they want, etc.

But, a cigar is a cigar, and you have no idea how a cigar smokes until you smoke it.

I have had the Romeo Y Julieta Wide Churchill many times after that first experience, and after these few years of coming back to it over, and over again, I can now pinpoint each and every distinct flavor.

Flavor notes started with the first third. It had a beautiful roasted oily nuttiness, like a roasted peanut, a bright syrupy cedar note, and a honey sweetness. The second third had a dry earth and accompanied very well with the nuttiness, and the cedar note morphed into a general woodiness. A floral, almost orange blossom replaced the honey. A sprinkle of black pepper taste and tingle joined the mix, as well. The honey note came back during the final third, with the addition of a light roast coffee, a warm toasty general nuttiness, again, and an oak – similar to what you experience when you drink bourbon or rye whiskies. It had a slight effervescent tingle on the tongue and a combined earthiness that rounded the palate.

Although the Wide Churchill brings back many memories of that Christmas, there’s one stick that keeps getting better and better each time I have it. It’s the Padron 1964 Anniversary Series in “Hermoso,” in Maduro. It’s a soft box-pressed 4x56 stick, with a dark chocolate-colored wrapper. This is one of those sticks designed for shorter smoke times, like 25-30 minutes or so, but you wished it came in a larger size…there’s a joke in there somewhere.

This particular Padron was almost a straight shooter, meaning it didn’t have many transitions, unlike other Padrons. But, the flavors were spectacular. 9 The first half started with a full-bodied blast of dark roast coffee, dark chocolate, leather, and a black pepper taste and tingle. It lasted until the next draw. It almost felt like you were hit by a ton of bricks, the flavors were so powerful. It transitioned at about the halfway point.

The second half had almost everything in the first half, with the addition of dark caramel, and a warm dry nuttiness, something like a walnut or an almond. The draw finished on a black pepper taste, texture, and tingle on the tongue, and the whole experience lasted from the moment you start smoking, till the second you put it down. It was one of the best cigars I’d ever had.

Cigar smoking isn’t reserved just for the rich and famous, even though it’s perceived that way. Believe it or not, the best cigar critics are people like you and me, because we don’t smoke it for anybody else, but ourselves. The everyday cigar smoker smokes them to enjoy it, not because of the hefty price tag it came with. Even if you smoke for the nicotine, or because you think it makes you look cool, or for flavor, or think that the Millennium Davidoff from 1990 tastes better than the one in 2018, it’s still an enjoyment. To me, that’s all that matters, because as Zino Davidoff says, it’s “time beautifully spent.” And, as I always say, “Stay classy, folks.”