Smoke 'em if you got 'em...What makes a good cigar?

By Gary J. Arzt

This column has always been a recounting of the cigars I smoke, who I have been smoking with, and where I have been smoking. The other day, a fellow smoker flatteringly compared my work to Samuel Pepys, who wrote his "Diary" at the Prospect of Whitby, a pub on Wapping Wharf (the Thames) in London. My pub is my favourite tobacconist. And, while Pepys wrote about the Great Fire, the Plague, and other momentous events of his time, I write about momentous cigars and great tobacco shops of our time. Hell, maybe we do have a lot in common!

When I took on this assignment it reminded me of another column I had been pondering about writing: 'How do you make a bad cigar?' After all, in spite of the fact that we are almost awash in excellent to superb cigars from various makers, we all have experienced bad smokes.

The basics are just that, basics: Start with growing or acquiring quality tobaccos - wrapper, binder, and filler. Like every other commodity, tobaccos purchased can be of various grades; likewise tobaccos grown by the ultimate user, the cigar maker, will be of different qualities. So, perhaps a better word would be 'quality tobacco' that is well suited to what the Tabacalera intends to produce.

In any event, the growing, harvesting, curing, fermenting and aging process is what determines the quality of tobacco you wind up with for the production of cigars. While harvesting can start about 40 days after planting, the process can take as much as 30 days, since each leaf is picked individually, by hand, with no mechanical assistance.

Blending is the critical step. It's all in the blend, and for that one must have "a palate." I think one must be born with a palate, much as one is born with an ear for music. Both can be tweaked or fine tuned, but if you don't have the rudimentary talent, I doubt you can acquire it; it is very comparable to tea tasters and perfumers; they have "a nose."

When I created and produced my own, ill-fated cigar with Augusto Reyes, we went through about 16 iterations before we hit on the blend that was right. Blending is a process. No one hits what they want instantly, not even the likes of Pepin Garcia or Ernie Carrillo or Henkie Kelner.

You get to the point where you've got what you want, you smoke it, almost endlessly, and you say, "Hmmm…maybe a little Volado to soften/lighten it." The process can go on like that ad infinitum, as you smoke more, smoke with others, and elicit opinions from knowledgeable smokers.

So, you've got the blend; all that's left is rolling and aging (the finished product this time). This is no walk in the park, either. With cigars it is all about quality, and it is all done by hand. Sure, some people strip the vein from the leaf mechanically, and a lot of factories have DrawMasters [draw testing machines] today, but premium cigars, like very few other products in the world today, are produced entirely by hand!

Everything about the growing and everything that follows would be of no value to we smokers if it weren't for talents like Litto Gomez, Jesus Fuego, and others, including the aforementioned Kelner, Perez-Carrillo and Pepin Garcia.

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Now we are seeing Jaime Garcia, Pepin's son as well as Pachy Quesada and other young Quesadas deeply involved in the business and the business of blending. So, perhaps it comes with the DNA - this palate I speak of.

These steps are all important, nay, critical in making a good cigar. But to me there is one more element that is of equal importance, and it is not a process, it is not a step in the creation of a good cigar; it is, nonetheless, the ultimate determinant of whether a cigar is good!

I don't even know if there is a term for it in the idiom of cigar making, but I use the show business term, "legs." A good cigar has legs; you want to smoke it, and smoke it again, and smoke it regularly, and smoke it often.

As for myself, I smoke eight cigars a day; I have a repertoire that includes cigars I have been smoking for years, if not decades. Nonetheless, I am always willing to try a new cigar. Well, let me amend that. Not always willing, because like new restaurants, I am all the more annoyed when I try one and it disappoints me, knowing if I stuck to my tried-and-true regular spots, I would have enjoyed myself. It is the same for me with cigars. Ergo, I always try new cigars by blenders/makers that I know will enhance my smoking experience.

As I continue to write here, it has occurred to me that an important element to many of these iconic cigar makers is, they invariably acquire land and start growing their own tobacco. I saw it happen with Litto Gomez. The desire, no; more so perhaps the need to fashion the product from the seed on up. Obviously, it allows the blender/maker more input into what his product will be and will even taste like from its infancy.

So many who started blending and making cigars wind up growing their own tobacco brings us back to my comment about it all beginning with the tobacco; and these men, these great blenders, know they have to get their hands into the soil.

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Coincidentally, juxtaposed to my writing this article came an invitation to attend the launch of MATASA's "Quesada 35th Anniversary" at Davidoff on Madison Avenue this past June.

The cigar was the first cigar blended totally by the 5th generation of Quesadas - Manolo Quesada's "young ones," as he refers to them - daughters Pachy and Raquel, and nieces and nephews Hostos, Esther, and Blondie. It is also the first cigar to bear the Quesada family name.

Alas, I didn't get to New York City as planned for the event, but, Pachy was gracious enough to send me a few of the beautiful, box-pressed, dark, oily cigars.

So, here is why this coincidence is important. It is an opportunity to test my theory about "legs." I'm going to smoke 'em, and I commend them to you as well. If they are to your taste, you'll continue to smoke them. In a future column I will let you know if the Quesada 35th Anniversary has legs. After you've tried it, in return, I'd like you to tell me if the cigar has legs for you.

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We've all smoked a cigar for the first time, loved it, and then when we fire up the second one, we wonder what the hell we were thinking when we smoked the first one! Unfortunately, it happens very often, which again leads me to thinking about writing the "How do you make a bad cigar" article.

Suffice it to say, tobacco growing, curing, fermenting, aging, blending, rolling, aging - you name it - they're all important, but ultimately, a good cigar has to have legs!

The smoking lamp is lighted.

To correspond with Gary Arzt, email him at garyjarzt@gmail.com.