UNLOCKING THE MYSTERY PART I: SIGHT & TOUCH
What makes a cigar taste great? Often, it's one of those "you'll know it when you see it" things, and over analyzing a cigar does nothing but destroy the mystery. While we want to know what makes a cigar taste great, we don't want our pleasure reduced to a chemical analysis of smoke and tobacco. In short, we want the romance to continue with each new cigar encounter. Having said that, however, most will agree that there are certain parameters, that structure and the ingredients of any cigar determine its taste. Of course, there is more to it than just sticking a cigar in your mouth - taste means using all of your senses. Sight, touch, smell, and taste each play a major role in cigar smoking.
In Part 1 of 2, this month we'll take a look at the importance sight and touch play in evaluating a cigar. Sight and touch are two peas in a pod. The first thing you do when you remove a cigar from a box or humidor is inspect it. The appearance and feel of the cigar wrapper tell a story about taste. Even before you light it, seeing and feeling a wrapper with nice silky oil - indicative of proper humidification - and without visual blemishes can give you certain expectations, though wrapper appearance will vary depending upon where the leaf was grown.
The best wrappers are often like silk, with exceedingly close cell structure. Connecticut shade wrappers are a good example of this. They also possess an elasticity and strength often lacking in wrapper leaves from other countries. By contrast, Cameroon wrapper shows oil in its bumpy surface, called "tooth". These bumps are a good sign that great taste and aroma will follow, even if the texture of the leaf isn't silky. Wrappers from Connecticut and Ecuador are somewhat close in surface texture, though not in color. Better Ecuadorian leaf has less tooth, is smooth to the touch and has a matte-like appearance. Connecticut wrapper shows more color depth, a bit more tooth and a nice shine. Despite the differences in the way oil appears, oil in wrapper leaf indicates that the cigar has been well humidified (oil secretes from tobacco at 70 to 72 percent humidity) and that the smoke should be relatively cool. A cool smoke is a tastier one, because your nose and mouth can pick up more nuance than just hot, carbonized tobacco flavor.
If you don't see any cracks or ripples in the surface of the wrapper leaf, you also know that the cigar wasn't exposed to cycles of over-humidification and excessive dryness. This, too, is important. If the cigar is forced through rapid cycles of expansion and contraction, the internal construction is destroyed. A cigar with internal damage will smoke unevenly, or "plug," drawing unevenly. This may still occur due to faulty construction, but your chances are better with a perfect wrapper than with a broken one.
A final visual clue is the burn rate. A cigar that is burning improperly distorts the flavor of the blend. Simply put, a cigar is designed to burn evenly. A cigar is constructed to burn different tobaccos throughout the length of the smoke. A cigar may start off mild, grow stronger, or change in some other way, and these changes are attributable to the location of different tobaccos in the cigar structure. An uneven burn changes all that. Perhaps a "tunneling" effect will occur, with one side of the cigar burning while the other stagnates. If this occurs the draw will be uneven, the smoke may become very strong, and the taste in your mouth becomes overwrought with a one-dimensional taste.
Of course, most cigar smokers know that your impression or enjoyment of a good cigar is much more an art than science, and the finest manufacturers know that great cigars become far more than the sum of their parts. Next month, we'll take a closer look at the importance of smell and taste.
Part 1 of 2 Continue to Part 2
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