Cigar, Food, Epiphany

By J. Eric Ruegg

Last night I had one of those life-changing experiences, an epiphany. I am a foodie, and my passion for cooking informs just about everything else I enjoy which is gustatory in nature, be it beer, wine, spirits, and yes, especially cigars.

Two weeks ago I sat in a warm, quiet loft at a local bar and enjoyed a Gran Habano 3 Siglos Gran Corona. Its flavors were truly spectacular and tantalized my taste buds into submission. I closed my eyes and imagined myself rising up through those aromatic clouds as if smoke were a physical substantiation of my inner presence.  I had achieved the unfulfilled promise made by the Dalai Lama to Carl Spackler in Caddyshack - "total consciousness." The flavor profile of that cigar impressed me deeply. It was an ebb and flow of rich, aromatic bliss. While I had difficulty singling out any one particular note from another, underneath a predominant tone of cedar, I tasted what seemed to reference baking spices.

Fast-forward two weeks:
I cooked dinner for my wife, and roasted up a delicious pork tenderloin recipe from Gourmet magazine. The recipe called for fennel bulb slices, and a crushed fennel seed, and black pepper rub for the pork. As I browned the meat in a sauté pan, its aroma filled the room, and the fennel elevated my senses. Pulled from the oven, the roasted meat and garlic coalesced with the herbal quality of the fennel seeds, bulbs, and fronds, further nuanced by a freshly juiced lemon. While the tenderloin rested in a quite corner, the remaining ingredients mingled by firelight in the sauté pan, working in harmony to attain a delicately balanced reduction upon which the roasted meat would find its rest. All hopes and dreams, sensationally delicious, would owe to their grandeur the relationship between disparate elements; each ones ability to work in unison towards a complementary whole.

Later, after dinner, my wife went to her office, so seizing the opportunity (and the slightly warmer weather), I retired to the porch for a cigar. Rather than a high-end, special occasion cigar, I opted for a revisit to a value purchase I had made last year.  I have had this bundle of Perdomo Reserve Cameroon Robustos aging in my humidor for about 4 months now. From my prior experiences I remember them to be average, and non-eventful, but on my budget I couldn't pass on the deal I had found. Unfortunately, I wound up with a small humidor packed to the gills with strong, bitter, and occasionally sour tasting Perdomos. I had read a bunch of articles about aging young cigars, so I hoped this to be the answer to an otherwise regretful smoke, and so I have rested those cigars in my humidor undisturbed until now. Tonight, I would taste the influence of time.

Comfortably poised in my lounge chair, I cut the cigar and slowly toasted the foot until it glow red against the dark backdrop of night. The cigar started off as I remembered; a little toasty, nutty, with a slight bitterness. After about 10 minutes however, something remarkable happened: the Perdomo softened in its flavor, and opened up to reveal a complex, and more nuanced degree of those notes previously hidden by bitter discord.  It was nearly good.  Moments later it was good.  It was in a state of becoming.

As I settled into the flavor range of my well rested Cameroon, I began to take notice of my beverage pairing. Finishing off the last of a glass of Pinot from dinner, I set my mind to something slightly more cocoa - a stout. I set the cigar down and quickly went to the kitchen to procure my beverage. After opening the bottle, I took an obligatory taste before returning to the cigar on the porch. It was then that I realized the error of my judgment. I did not need to draw upon the cigar another time to know that the beer was too bitter for the Perdomo. 

Within that cigar nestled flavors hidden like timid forest creatures, which merely required an appropriate decoy, a beverage pairing that would gently tease them out into the open.  I was determined to discover who were the flavor's allies? Who were its friends? This was no time for mad-scientist basement tinkering, there was a cigar on the porch desperately waiting for resuscitating breath to revive its embers. I needed to think fast. In a mad fury, thoughts raced through my mind. I remembered the 3 Siglos, its cinnamon, I remembered the pork tenderloin and its fennel, its anise flavors, I thought of the Perdomo on the porch, its desperate flavors wishing to escape to freedom, what were they? I only knew that they shared some of the spices of these confluent events. 

Then I remembered, in a bottle in the fridge, was the remnant surplus of the Wassail I had made the night before. A witches brew of cider, cranberry and pomegranate juices, oranges, and spices, delicious, aromatic spices; cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and clove. I hurriedly poured the punch into a mug, micro-waved it till it steamed, then topped it off with a little Bacardi, before making my way back to the porch.

Three short pulls brought the cigar back to life, and then I slowly brought the mug to my mouth, anxious to experience the fruition of my labor. The sweetness of the cider complemented the earthiness of the cigar nicely. As for the spices, one always runs the risk of overpowering a cigar with a beverage, or at the very least coloring the experience in a synthetic way, but in this case I felt that the cider and its cinnamon, and cloves, teased out of the cigar those very same attributes previously hidden. Likewise, the cigar imparted an earthy, woodsy aroma to the cider.

As the cigar burned on into the night, it continued to soften in flavor, opening with increasing nuance. Was it the pairing that made the cigar? Could the cigar stand alone? These are of course questions whose answers will become apparent to me in time.

As I relate the cigar to my experiences in the kitchen, it seems to me that matters of establishing taste often follow experimentation and invention. Taste expands towards greater inclusion. Flavor is an essence that resides in many things, and is an intrinsic attribute to its object. However, our taste is an experience, and as such is ephemeral and ethereal. Our subjective, transient sensations define our objects of delectation. It seems the task for our palates is merely to seek out and experience the essence of taste, to locate the objects of its expression, and enjoy. Food, good drink, and cigars are host to tastes expression, not to mention sources from which we will find great enjoyment. I am a little closer to knowing what that means to me, now that I have discovered those flavors that entice, and some of the places that they can be found.  

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J. Eric Ruegg is an Assistant Professor of Art at Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia.