A cigar, unlike cigarettes, is designed to bring pleasure of its flavor, and not to saturate the smoker’s body with the nicotine.
According to smokers, the main purpose of smoking a cigar is enjoyment of tobacco flavor. Also, usually cigars define a social status of smoking person and as a rule cigar smoking is a sign of a high social status.
Dita Von Teese exhaling cigar smoke
1. Term Derivation
The English term “cigar” comes from the word sik-ar, which indicated the process of smoking on the Mayan language.
2. Where Cigar Tobacco is Grown
Mainly cigar tobacco is grown in Brazil, Cameroon, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Indonesia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Philippines and the United States.
3. Cigar Composition
A cigar has three components: wrapper that performs the function of the shell, binder and filler -the core of the cigar. The filler consists of tobacco leaves of different sorts. Usually there are three sorts: ligero (upper leaf of a plant receives the most sunlight teries, it gives the fortress to a ciag), seco (it is responsible for flavor) and volado (lower leaves of tobacco plants, they provide the burning of a cigar.)
4. Cigar Shapes
Parejo
The parejo is the most common shape, sometimes referred to as simply “coronas”. They have a cylindrical body, straight sides, one open end and a round tobacco-leaf “cap” on the other end which must be removed, have a V-shaped notch made in it with a special cutter, or punched through before smoking.
Figurado
Unconventionally shaped cigars are known as figurados and are sometimes estimated of higher quality because they are more difficult to produce.
Particularly during the 19th century, figurados were the most popular shapes; however, by the 1930s they went out of vogue and all but disappeared. They have, however, recently received a small revival in popularity, and there are currently many manufacturers that produce figurados alongside the simpler parejos.
5. Cigar Colors
The color of a cigar is the color of its cover sheet. There are six basic colors of cigars (oscuro, maduro, colorado maduro, colorado, colorado claro, claro), although there are, of course, innumerable nuances.
Oscuro – very black
Maduro – very dark brown or black
Colorado Maduro – darker brown
Colorado – distinctive reddish-brown
Colorado Claro – medium brown
Claro – very light tan or yellowish. Indicative of shade-grown tobacco.
6. Interesting
Gurkha cigar box
The most expensive cigars in the world are Gurkha. In 2006 it was released a series of Black Dragon at $1150 for a cigar. There were produced only had 5 boxes, hand-carved from camel bone and which hold 100 cigars.
