How to keep your cigars

(florida’s cigar snob magazine july/august)

How to Keep Your Cigars

By: Colin Ganley

Cigars should be ready to smoke when you pluck them out of their container.

Right? Cracking, uneven burning, frequent re-lighting, these should not

characterize premium cigar smoking. Unfortunately these maladies occur

more often that they need to.

In late May I bought a corona gorda to smoke in the lounge of a cigar shop.

The manager commented that he was struggling to keep his humidor evenly

humidified. The effects of this became obvious when I lit the cigar. The

burn-speed on one side reminded me of space shuttle re-entry, hot and fast,

while the other side was like an uphill soapbox derby in the rain.

Later that day I smoked aged cigars of twenty and forty-six years, both of

which burned and tasted…perfect. Burns were slow and even while flavors

were mature and powerful. In all three cases, the keeping of these cigars was

responsible for their respective under and excellent performances.

Tobacco must be blended, fermented and constructed well to become a great

cigar. This is common sense. Less common is the knowledge that like fine

wines, cigars can be ruined by bad storage or improved with proper aging.

If you are like me, you have stored cigars in all manner of containers. Some that I am more or less proud of include plastic bags, aluminum tubes, Tupperware, glove boxes, ceramic jars, and wooden humidors. This magazine’s review of humidors will give guidance about some of the best places to store your cigars so I won’t discuss that here. Whether your cigars are in a premium humidor or something else, there are four basic principles, which apply to the storage of precious smokes.  

For Smoking or Aging?

Before discussing storage principles, let’s examine why storage is important. Cigar storage can achieve two goals. When I grab a cigar from the humidor I want it to smoke perfectly. Whether the cigars are fresh or aged, they should be smoke-ready any time, day or night. Smokability is the first goal of cigar storage.

Vintage cigars, those with more than a few years of age on them, can develop their flavors beyond how they tasted fresh from the factory. Smooth and rich characteristics develop in aged cigars once the twang of youth disappears. This is a unique pleasure to behold. Not all old cigars will develop into classics. For those that can, ‘proper keeping’ is instrumental to this transformation.

Whether you want to smoke the cigars soon or lay them down for aging, the same storage principles apply. What follows is a brief outline of the four major issues in storage with some advice as to how to best keep your prized sticks.

Weevil Avoidance: Lasioderma Serricorne is the tobacco weevil (beetle) that eats tunnels through rows of cigars. In its adult form it is a reddish brown, hairy, hump-backed bug of 2-3 mm. in length. Typically you will not see them but you will see where they have been. Opening a cigar box and finding little holes in cigars and cellophane is pure agony. Not only are the cigars unsmokable, the bugs are still in there!

Manufacturers take pains to eliminate the weevil through fumigation, freezing, and sometimes pressure chambers. Even still, some eggs survive the chemicals, temperature and crushing pressure to find their way into your home humidor. What can be done to avoid or eliminate the weevil? I suggest two cigar protection techniques.

Cold temperatures kill weevils. Cool temperatures keep them inactive. Therefore, the first line of defense against the weevil is to keep your cigars in cool temperatures. Freezing your cigars for five days will eliminate all weevils. Unless you have reason to suspect tobacco beetles, it is probably enough to keep your cigars in a cool place, such as a wine cellar.

If your cigar collection numbers in the hundreds, you have a choice to make. Should you keep your cigars in their boxes or expose them to the circulating air of the humidor? From a weevil avoidance perspective, it makes sense to store them in their original boxes. Though weevils can eat through tobacco and cellophane, they cannot eat through most wood boxes.

Leaf Maintenance: Assuming that weevils have not eaten your cigars, the next most important storage principle is maintaining a proper humidity level in your humidor. Proper humidification will ensure that leaves don’t crack or expand and that oils will maintain their original flavors. Fortunately, this is what humidors were designed to do.

The generally accepted humidity range for cigar storage is 65-70%. This refers to the amount of humidity in the air. At 100%, the water in the air forms rain, condensation and visible water. 0% is nearly impossible to create because air tries to hold some water. Within an air-conditioned building, the humidity level will be far below the acceptable humidity range for cigar storage.

In Florida’s summers, it is quite common that air humidity will reach levels above the desired humidity range for your cigars. This is unlike most other parts of the US. Consider that if you live in a place with high humidity, you will not only need to add water but sometimes remove it from the air in order to maintain your cigars properly. Several devices do this and your local tobacconist knows about them.

The purpose of maintaining the proper humidity is to keep the tobacco leaves burnable and to keep their oils from drying up and losing flavor. The importance of this cannot be understated. The taste of your cigars is at stake in the humidity game. Many debate the percentage humidity that is ideal for cigar storage. I keep mine at 65% as much as possible but anything between 65-70% is very good.

Storage Consistency: The cigar I mentioned earlier that burned fast on one side and slowly on the other, was stored in a humidor with bad air circulation. Moisture was allowed to gather and the cigars basically ‘sat in a puddle.’ It is dangerous to allow moisture to gather in a humidor because not only can cigars become damp but also mold can grow.

Mold and bad burning will rain on anyone’s golf game. Let’s not focus on the bad though. What are the benefits of circulating air and how can one do it? Well the benefits are easily stated. If air is circulated, cigars will be evenly humidified, mold will not grow, and every cigar in the humidor will be ready to be smoked. Circulation is good for long term aging as well. As ammonia and other byproducts of aging are produced, circulation of air removes those elements from the cigars. To create circulation, merely allow enough space around the cigars for air to freely circulate and open the humidor periodically to exchange the air.

Scent Transfer: Tobacco leaves soak up aromas and particles from the surrounding air. For this reason, Drew Estates (Acid) and CAO (Flavors), among others, have attained success infusing non-tobacco essences into tobacco leaves. Just like in the factory, your cigars at home can absorb flavors from what you place near them.

A cigar can very quickly absorb strong aromas such as wood varnish or food smells. This is why it is important to keep smokes in a cedar or odorless container. Storing different cigars together will allow them to take on the other’s characteristics. Sometimes I mix cigars in a humidor but for the pure flavor of a cigar, it is best to keep brands separate.

These four principles (weevil avoidance, leaf maintenance, storage consistency, scent transfer) are a good starting point for understanding cigar storage. Since storage is part art and not just science, I wanted to ask some long time cigar agers about the topic. I started with Edward Sahakian who owns the Davidoff store in London. He keeps two humidors on the premises. One is for selling current stock and the other is for aging vintage cigars.

As is the normal convention, his shop-floor humidor is a fantastic walk-in room with cedar shelves, lots of air circulation, and many fantastic cigars. What is unique about his set-up is the separate humidor for aging. He ages cigars in a humidified but very cool environment. Even with a coat on, this humidor was too cold to stand in for more than fifteen minutes.

We sat down for lunch across the street from his shop to discuss storing and aging cigars that afternoon. To facilitate the discussion, we tasted several cigars between two and fifty years old. As a testament to his aging procedures, the older cigars smoked fantastically. Edward truly is an expert cigar ager.

We tasted some lancero vitolas that were from 2007. They were rich, earthy, full of tannins, and had a spicy twang that tasted lightly bitter on the tongue. We then tasted a cigar from the same brand but with over ten years of age on it. That lancero had much of the same earthiness but its bite had nearly disappeared. Without the twang of youth, a more complex bouquet of sweet and woody flavors came to the surface.

This flavor transformation is typical of aged full-bodied cigars. Edward recommends that aging fuller bodied cigars is generally best, though some lighter cigars age phenomenally well.

There was one other gentleman I thought needed to be consulted before I put this issue to bed. His name is Mitchell Orchant (www.cgarsltd.co.uk) and he has one of the largest collections of pre-embargo Cuban cigars that I know of.

Mitchell does not keep his cigars at the cool temperatures Edward does but he does maintain a constant temperature slightly below 68 degrees Fahrenheit. I smoked a Henry Clay cigar from the 1950s, back when they were still made in Havana, and its flavor was surprisingly strong.

How do you keep a cigar for over half of a century without it losing its flavor? I asked. His answer can be summarized as “consistency!” By keeping cigars at low humidity levels (around 65%) and keeping a constant temperature with no direct sunlight, he gets fantastic results.

Those with the most practice such as Edward and Mitchell, as it turns out, do the same things we can all do. They buy good quality cigars, keep them in constant conditions, smoke many and save the rest for years to come.

-Colin Ganley