A cigar is a tobacco product made to be smoked. Cigars are produced in a variety of shapes and sizes. Since the 20th century, almost all cigars are made of three distinct components: the filler, the binder leaf which holds the filler together, and a wrapper leaf, for appearance and flavor, which is often the highest quality leaf used. Often there will be a cigar band printed with the cigar manufacturer's logo. Modern cigars can come with two or more, highlighting special qualities such as age and origin of the tobaccos used.

Cigar smoking carries a variety of serious health risks, including developing cancer, respiratory, cardiovascular, periodontal and other diseases.^[1]

Etymology

The word cigar originally derives from the Mayan sikar ("to smoke rolled tobacco leaves"—from si'c, "tobacco"). The Spanish word "cigarro" is derived from it. The English abbreviation “cigar” came into general use in 1730.^[2]

History

Although the specific origin of the cigar is unknown, a Mayan ceramic pot from Guatemala dating back to the 10th century depicts people smoking tobacco leaves tied together with a string.^{[citation needed]}

The practice of tobacco smoking was widely diffused among many of the islands of the Caribbean in the pre-Contact period. It was first observed by European Age of Discovery explorers when encountering the indigenous Taino people of Cuba in 1492.^[3][4][5]

The Spanish historian, landowner, and Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas vividly described how the first scouts sent by Christopher Columbus into the interior of Cuba found

Men with half-burned wood in their hands and certain herbs to take their smokes, which are some dry herbs put in a certain leaf, also dry, like those the boys make on the day of the Passover of the Holy Ghost; and having lighted one part of it, by the other they suck, absorb, or receive that smoke inside with the breath, by which they become benumbed and almost drunk, and so it is said they do not feel fatigue. These, muskets as we will call them, they call tabacos. I knew Spaniards on this island of Española who were accustomed to take it, and being reprimanded for it, by telling them it was a vice, they replied they were unable to cease using it. I do not know what relish or benefit they found in it.^[6]

Following the first wave of European colonization, tobacco became one of the primary products fueling European colonialism, and also became a driving factor in the incorporation of African slave labor.^[3][4][5][7] The Spanish introduced tobacco to Europeans in about 1528, and by 1533, Diego Columbus mentioned a tobacco merchant of Lisbon in his will, showing how quickly the traffic had sprung up. The French, Spanish, and Portuguese initially referred to the plant as the "sacred herb" because of its alleged medicinal properties.^[6]

In time, Spanish and other European sailors adopted the practice of smoking rolls of leaves, as did the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors.^[3][5] Smoking primitive cigars spread to Spain, Portugal, and eventually France, most probably through Jean Nicot, the French ambassador to Portugal, whose name became the root of the word nicotine.^[5] Later, tobacco use spread to the Italian kingdoms, the Dutch Empire, and, after Sir Walter Raleigh's voyages to the Americas, to Great Britain. Tobacco smoking became familiar throughout Europe—in pipes in Britain—by the mid-16th century.^[5]

Spanish cultivation of tobacco began in earnest in 1531 on the island of Hispaniola.^[4][8] In 1542, tobacco started to be grown commercially in North America, when Spaniards established the first cigar factory in Cuba.^[9] Tobacco was originally thought to have medicinal qualities, but some considered it evil. It was denounced by Philip II of Spain and James I of England.^[10]

Around 1592, the Spanish galleon San Clemente brought 50 kilograms (110 lb) of tobacco seed to the Philippines over the Acapulco-Manila trade route. It was distributed among Roman Catholic missionaries, who found excellent climates and soils for growing high-quality tobacco there. The use of the cigar did not become popular until the mid 18th century, and although there are few drawings from this era, there are some reports.

It is believed that Israel Putnam brought back a cache of Havana cigars during the Seven Years' War,^[11] making cigar smoking popular in the US after the American Revolution. He also brought Cuban tobacco seeds, which he planted in the Hartford area of New England. This reportedly resulted in the development of the renowned shade-grown Connecticut wrapper.^[12]

Towards the end of the 18th century and in the 19th century, cigar smoking was common, while cigarettes were comparatively rare. Towards the end of the 19th century, Rudyard Kipling wrote his famous smoking poem, The Betrothed (1886). The cigar business was an important industry and factories employed many people before mechanized manufacturing of cigars became practical. Cigar workers in both Cuba and the US were active in labor strikes and disputes from early in the 19th century, and the rise of modern labor unions can be traced to the CMIU and other cigar worker unions.^[13]

In 1869, Spanish cigar manufacturer Vicente Martinez Ybor moved his Principe de Gales (Prince of Wales) operations from the cigar manufacturing center of Havana, Cuba to Key West, Florida to escape the turmoil of the Ten Years' War. Other manufacturers followed, and Key West became an important cigar manufacturing center. In 1885, Ybor moved again, buying land near the small city of Tampa, Florida and building the largest cigar factory in the world at the time^[14] in the new company town of Ybor City. Friendly rival and Flor de Sánchez y Haya owner Ignacio Haya built his factory nearby the same year, and many other cigar manufacturers followed, especially after an 1886 fire that gutted much of Key West. Thousands of Cuban and Spanish tabaqueros came to the area from Key West, Cuba and New York to produce hundreds of millions of cigars annually. Local output peaked in 1929, when workers in Ybor City and West Tampa rolled over 500 million "clear Havana" cigars, earning the town the nickname "Cigar Capital of the World".^{[15][16][17][18]} At its peak, there were 150 cigar factories in Ybor city, but by early in the next decade, nearly all of the factories had closed.^[19][20] Only one company still makes cigars in the Ybor City area, the J. C. Newman Cigar Company, which moved to Tampa from Ohio in 1954 and took over the previous Regensburg cigar factory. The company was continuing to utilize some antique, hand-operated ARENCO and American Machine and Foundry cigarmaking machines from the 1930s.^[21]

In New York, cigars were made by rollers working in their homes. It was reported that as of 1883, cigars were being manufactured in 127 apartment houses in New York, employing 1,962 families and 7,924 individuals. A state statute banning the practice, passed late that year at the urging of trade unions on the basis that the practice suppressed wages, was ruled unconstitutional less than four months later. The industry, which had relocated to Brooklyn (then a separate municipality) and other places on Long Island while the law was in effect, then returned to New York.^[22]

As of 1905, there were 80,000 cigar-making operations in the US, most of them small, family-operated shops where cigars were rolled and sold immediately.^[15] While most cigars are now made by machine, some, as a matter of prestige and quality, are rolled by hand—especially in Central America and Cuba, as well as in small chinchales in sizable cities in the US.^[15] Boxes of hand-rolled cigars bear the phrase totalmente a mano (totally by hand) or hecho a mano (made by hand). These premium hand-rolled cigars are significantly different from the machine-made cigars sold in packs at drugstores and gas stations. Since the 1990s there has been severe contention between producers and aficionados of premium handmade cigars and cigarette manufacturing companies^{[clarification needed]} that create machine-made cigars.^{[citation needed]}

Manufacture

Tobacco leaves are harvested and aged using a curing process that combines heat and shade to reduce sugar and water content without causing the larger leaves to rot. This takes between 25 and 45 days, depending upon climatic conditions and the nature of sheds used to store harvested tobacco. Curing varies by type of tobacco and desired leaf color. A slow fermentation follows, where temperature and humidity are controlled to enhance flavor, aroma, and burning characteristics while forestalling rot or disintegration.

The leaf will continue to be baled, inspected, un-baled, re-inspected, and baled again during the aging cycle. When it has matured to manufacturer's specifications it is sorted for appearance and overall quality, and used as filler or wrapper accordingly. During this process, leaves are continually moistened to prevent damage.

Quality cigars are still handmade.^[23] An experienced cigar-roller can produce hundreds of good, nearly identical cigars per day. The rollers keep the tobacco moist—especially the wrapper—and use specially designed crescent-shaped knives, called chavetas, to form the filler and wrapper leaves quickly and accurately.^[23] Once rolled, the cigars are stored in wooden forms as they dry, in which their uncapped ends are cut to a uniform size.^[23] From this stage, the cigar is a complete product that can be "laid down" and aged for decades if kept as close to 21 °C (70 °F) and 70% relative humidity as possible. Once purchased, proper storage is typically in a specialized cedar-lined wooden humidor.

Some cigars, especially premium brands, use different varieties of tobacco for the filler and the wrapper. Long filler cigars are a far higher quality of cigar, using long leaves throughout. These cigars also use a third variety of tobacco leaf, called a "binder", between the filler and the outer wrapper. This permits the makers to use more delicate and attractive leaves as a wrapper. These high-quality cigars almost always blend varieties of tobacco. Even Cuban long-filler cigars will combine tobaccos from different parts of the island to incorporate several different flavors.

In low-grade and machine-made cigars, chopped tobacco leaves are used for the filler, and long leaves or a type of "paper" made from reconstituted tobacco pulp is used for the wrapper.^[23] Chopped leaves and a pulp wrapper alter the flavor and burning characteristics of the result vis-a-vis handmade cigars.

Historically, a lector or reader was employed to entertain cigar factory workers. This practice became obsolete once audiobooks for portable music players became available, but it is still practiced in some Cuban factories.

Dominant manufacturers

Two firms dominate the cigar industry, Altadis and the Scandinavian Tobacco Group.

Altadis, a Spanish-owned private concern, produces cigars in the US, the Dominican Republic, and Honduras, and owns a 50% stake in Corporación Habanos S.A., the state owned national Cuban tobacco company. It also makes cigarettes. The Scandinavian Tobacco Group produces cigars in the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and the United States; it also makes pipe tobacco and fine cut tobacco. The Group includes General Cigar Co.^[24]

The town of Tamboril in Santiago, Dominican Republic is considered by many as today's "Cigar Capital of the World" housing more cigar factories and rollers than anywhere else in the world.^[25] According to Cigar Aficionado magazine, 44% of the world's most traded cigars come from the Dominican Republic, the world's largest producer of cigars,^[26] especially from the fertile lands of the Cibao capital, where 90% of the factories are located.^[27] The area has also been the largest supplier of cigars to the US in the last decades.^[28]

Families in the cigar industry

Nearly all modern premium cigar makers are members of long-established cigar families, or purport to be, most originally rooted in the historic Cuban cigar industry. The art and skill of hand-making premium cigars has been passed from generation to generation. Families are often shown in many cigar advertisements and packaging.^[29]

In 1992, Cigar Aficionado magazine created the "Cigar Hall of Fame" and recognized the following six individuals:^[30]

• Edgar M. Cullman, Chairman, General Cigar Company, New York, United States
• Zino Davidoff, Founder, Davidoff et Cie., Geneva, Switzerland
• Carlos Fuente Sr., Chairman, Tabacalera A. Fuente y Cia., Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic
• Frank Llaneza, Chairman, Villazon & Co., Tampa, Florida, United States
• Stanford J. Newman, Chairman, J.C. Newman Cigar Company, Tampa, Florida, United States
• Ángel Oliva Sr. (founder); Oliva Tobacco Co., Tampa, Florida, United States

Other families in the cigar industry (2015)

• Manuel Quesada (MATASA Current CEO) Fonseca, Casa Magna, Quesada cigars, Dominican Republic
• Don José "Pepín" Garcia, Chairman, El Rey de Los Habanos, Miami, Florida, United States
• Aray Family – Daniel Aray Jr, Grandson of Founder (1952) Jose Aray, ACC Cigars, Guayaquil Ecuador, San Francisco, CA, Miami Florida, Macau SAR, Shanghai China.
• EPC – Ernesto Perez-Carillo, Founder EPC Cigar Company (2009), Miami, Florida, United States
• Nestor Miranda – Founder, Miami Cigar Company (1989) Miami, FL, United States
• Blanco family – Jose "Jochy" Blanco, son of Founder (1936) Jose Arnaldo Blanco Polanco, Tabacalera La Palma, Santiago, Dominican Republic
• Hermann Dietrich Upmann, founder of the H. Upmann brand 1844 in Cuba

Marketing and distribution

Pure tobacco, hand rolled cigars are marketed via advertisements, product placement in movies and other media, sporting events, cigar-friendly magazines such as Cigar Aficionado, and cigar dinners. Since handmade cigars are a premium product with a hefty price, advertisements often include depictions of affluence, sensual imagery, and explicit or implied celebrity endorsement.^[31]

Cigar Aficionado, launched in 1992, presents cigars as symbols of a successful lifestyle, and is a major conduit of advertisements that do not conform to the tobacco industry's voluntary advertisement restrictions since 1965, such as a restriction not to associate smoking with glamour. The magazine also presents pro-smoking arguments at length, and argues that cigars are safer than cigarettes, since they do not have the thousands of chemical additives that cigarette manufactures add to the cutting floor scraps of tobacco used as cigarette filler. The publication also presents arguments that risks are a part of daily life and that (contrary to the evidence discussed in Health effects) cigar smoking has health benefits, that moderation eliminates most or all health risk, and that cigar smokers live to old age, that health research is flawed, and that several health-research results support claims of safety.^[32] Like its competitor Smoke, Cigar Aficionado differs from marketing vehicles used for other tobacco products in that it makes cigars the main (but not sole) focus of the magazine, creating a symbiosis between product and lifestyle.^[33]

In the US, cigars have historically been exempt from many of the marketing regulations that govern cigarettes. For example, the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act of 1970 exempted cigars from its advertising ban,^[34] and cigar ads, unlike cigarette ads, need not mention health risks.^[31] As of 2007, cigars were taxed far less than cigarettes, so much so that in many US states, a pack of little cigars cost less than half as much as a pack of cigarettes.^[34] It is illegal for minors to purchase cigars and other tobacco products in the US, but laws are unevenly enforced: a 2000 study found that three-quarters of web cigar sites allowed minors to purchase them.^[35]

In 2009, the US Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act provided the Food and Drug Administration regulatory authority over the manufacturing, distribution, and marketing of cigarettes, roll-your-own tobacco and smokeless tobacco. In 2016, a deeming rule extended the FDA's authority to additional tobacco products including cigars, e-cigarettes and hookah.^[36] The objective of the law is to reduce the impact of tobacco on public health by preventing Americans from starting to use tobacco products, encourage current users to quit, and decrease the harms of tobacco product use.

In the US, inexpensive cigars are sold in convenience stores, gas stations, grocery stores, and pharmacies. Premium cigars are sold in tobacconists, cigar bars, and other specialized establishments.^[37] Some cigar stores are part of chains, which have varied in size: in the US, United Cigar Stores was one of only three outstanding examples of national chains in the early 1920s, the others being A&P and Woolworth's.^[38] Non-traditional outlets for cigars include hotel shops, restaurants, vending machines^[37] and the Internet.^[35]

Composition

Cigars are composed of three types of tobacco leaves, whose variations determine smoking and flavor characteristics:

Wrapper

A cigar's outermost layer, or wrapper (Spanish: capa), is the most expensive component of a cigar.^[39] The wrapper determines much of the cigar's character and flavor, and as such its color is often used to describe the cigar as a whole. Wrappers are frequently grown underneath huge canopies made of gauze so as to diffuse direct sunlight and are fermented separately from other rougher cigar components, with a view to the production of a thinly-veined, smooth, supple leaf.^[39]

Wrapper tobacco produced without the gauze canopies under which "shade grown" leaf is grown, generally more coarse in texture and stronger in flavor, is commonly known as "sun grown". A number of different countries are used for the production of wrapper tobacco, including Cuba, Ecuador, Indonesia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Brazil, Mexico, Cameroon, and the United States.^[39]

While dozens of minor wrapper shades have been touted by manufacturers, the seven most common classifications are as follows,^[40] ranging from lightest to darkest:

Some manufacturers use an alternate designation:

In general, dark wrappers add a touch of sweetness, while light ones add a hint of dryness to the taste.^[23]

Binder

Beneath the wrapper is a small bunch of "filler" leaves bound together inside of a leaf called a "binder" (Spanish: capote). The binder leaf is typically the sun-saturated leaf from the top part of a tobacco plant and is selected for its elasticity and durability in the rolling process.^[39] Unlike the wrapper leaf, which must be uniform in appearance and smooth in texture, the binder leaf may show evidence of physical blemishes or lack uniform coloration. The binder leaf is generally considerably thicker and hardier than the wrapper leaf surrounding it.

Filler

The bulk of a cigar is "filler"—a bound bunch of tobacco leaves. These leaves are folded by hand to allow air passageways down the length of the cigar, through which smoke is drawn after the cigar is lit.^[39] A cigar rolled with insufficient air passage is referred to by a smoker as "too tight"; one with excessive airflow creating an excessively fast, hot burn is regarded as "too loose". Considerable skill and dexterity on the part of the cigar roller is needed to avoid these opposing pitfalls—a primary factor in the superiority of hand-rolled cigars over their machine-made counterparts.^[39]

By blending various varieties of filler tobacco, cigar makers create distinctive strength, aroma, and flavor profiles for their various branded products. In general, fatter cigars hold more filler leaves, allowing a greater potential for the creation of complex flavors. In addition to the variety of tobacco employed, the country of origin can be one important determinant of taste, with different growing environments producing distinctive flavors.

The fermentation and aging process adds to this variety, as does the particular part of the tobacco plant harvested, with bottom leaves (Spanish: volado) having a mild flavor and burning easily, middle leaves (Spanish: seco) having a somewhat stronger flavor, with potent and spicy ligero leaves taken from the sun-drenched top of the plant. When used, ligero is always folded into the middle of the filler bunch due to its slow-burning characteristics.

Some cigar manufacturers purposely place different types of tobacco from one end to the other to give the cigar smokers a variety of tastes, body, and strength from start to finish.

If full leaves are used as filler, a cigar is said to be composed of "long filler". Cigars made from smaller bits of leaf, including many machine-made cigars, are said to be made of "short filler".

If a cigar is completely constructed (filler, binder, and wrapper) of tobacco produced in only one country, it is referred to in the cigar industry as a "puro", from the Spanish word for "pure".

Size and shape

Cigars are commonly categorized by their size and shape, which together are known as the vitola.

The size of a cigar is measured by two dimensions: its ring gauge (its diameter in sixty-fourths of an inch) and its length (in inches). In Cuba, next to Havana, there is a display of the world's longest rolled cigars.

Parejo

The most common shape is the parejo, sometimes referred to as simply "coronas", which have traditionally been the benchmark against which all other cigar formats are measured. They have a cylindrical shape their entire length, one end open, and a round tobacco-leaf "cap" on the other end that must be sliced off, notched, or pierced before smoking.

Parejos are designated by the following terms: