Married Cigars
So what is cigar marriage any way?
The easiest way to describe it is like putting a cut onion in the same bag with celery. After a short time, the celery tastes and smells like onion. Well that is exactly what happens in a humidor, but to a lesser extent.
Your cigars are all made with different tobacco. Some are Dominican, some Honduran, and others may be Cuban. The point is that you do not want to let the flavor and aroma blend together. ( Ok, I have to admit that sometimes it creates a unique blend! ) So, what you do is leave your precious puros in their packaging. This could be a tube or cellophane. This way you are able to store your cigars in the same humidor without the flavors blending or flavor marriage.
An alternative method is to use dividers, although not as effective. If you insist on unwrapping your cigars, make sure you use dividers between the different cigar types. If not, you may create an unexepected flavor, albeit desirable (maybe) one.
One more thing on cigar marriage. If you use an automatic humidifier as I do, you will deffinately not want to unwrap them. Unless of course you only have one type of cigar in your humidor. Why you may ask? An automatic humidifier has a fan to circulate the air inside your humidor. This helps to keep an even environment within your humidor.
Personally, I use Cigar Oasis. This is an automatic humidifier which also has an electronic hygrometer. Cigar Oasis refills with distilled water and can operate from a/c or battery. A fantatic solution to keeping your humidor’s environment correct for your fine cigars!
Click on the image for more information.
Hope that helped to understand cigar marriage. Please be sure to post your comments.
GB
Walt
3 Responses to “Married Cigars”
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May 9th, 2007 at 2:16 am
How come the picture of Cigar Oasis and all of the pictures on their site show the cigars UN-wrapped, but you recommend NOT unwrapping? (By the way, isn’t leaving the cigars in their containers/wrappers and putting them in a humidor kind of counter productive)? Just wondering.
May 9th, 2007 at 11:02 pm
Great question Andrew!
Aesthetics! It makes the picture look better. I will say that there are two schools of thought at work on this. One says wrapper off and use dividers if storing different types of cigars, and the other which I subscribe to is to leave them on.
My reasoning is simple, I ALWAYS have different types in my humidor since I enjoy many tobacco flavors. I may like to have a Macanudo Maduro in the evening while I would rather enjoy my Romeo Y Julieta Aniversario while on the golf course. I do not want the flavor of a strong Maduro marrying a lighter Conneticut wrapped cigar. While both are fantastic puros, they do not blend well together. Just look at the pic of my humidor and you will see that I ALWAYS leave them in their original wrapper. Some of my cigars have been in the humidor for over 4 years and smoke GREAT when I take them out!
Relative humidity is relative humidity! Open or closed, the cigar still absorbs, or disipates its moisture. So, if leaving your cigar wrapped was “counter productive”, you would never need a humidor for storage. The bonus of leaving them wrapped is their individuality remains the same!
Cigar “CHARACTER” is EXTREMELY important to a cigar aficionado such as myself. You purchase your puros for their unique flavor at a cost. You never want them to taste different than what you originally purchased!
Sorry to be so long with the answer Andrew, but you asked!
GB
Walt
February 5th, 2009 at 3:11 am
Heya…
Very nice site. All the best….