The Stogie Guys

To put it simply, this is a terrific book.

Whether you’re interested in history, cigars, preservation, tobacciana, or rural life, you’ll find yourself enchanted and enlightened as you move through this oversize volume just published by Schiffer Publishing for $24.99.

It will also likely sadden you a bit as you learn that these architectural treasures are rapidly vanishing from the landscape. Dale and Darcy Cahill, a pair of enthusiastic writers and photographers who have devoted themselves to documenting the sheds, estimate that more than 1,000 have been destroyed since their first volume on the subject was published in 2009.

This book uses a geographical theme to explore the sheds in words and roughly 250 photographs selected from about 7,000 frames. Beginning in Vermont and traveling the Connecticut River Valley south to Portland, Connecticut, the Cahills take readers on a marvelous journey.

In the book’s preface, cigar industry giant Carlito Fuente writes that “the tobacco barn stands tall, proud, and beautiful.” The Cahills describe it this way: “Whether standing inside or outside of a shed, a tobacco shed’s repetitive lines engage the eye” and the buildings themselves “evoke a sense of timelessness.”

In addition to the structures, Tobacco Sheds provides fascinating introductions to people such as Mrs. Prout in South Windsor, Connecticut, who is said to be “the first person to roll a cigar in the United States,” and artist Erika H. Zekos, who lit a tobacco shed from inside as a public art project in 2009 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Amherst, Massachusetts.

With the growing popularity of tourism to the cigar centers of Latin America, it seems an appropriate time to remember the reach and importance of cigar tobacco in the United States beyond Florida. And to do it not only with annual events, but by recognizing true artifacts.

This book is certainly a good way to do that. You should also check the Cahills’ website for other tobacco shed artwork, as well as their first book, Tobacco Sheds of the Connecticut River Valley. And StogieGuys.com will have more on the subject as well, with a interview of the Cahills and a contest you won’t want to miss.

–George E

photo credit: TobaccoSheds.com

On most Friday nights my mom and stepdad attend karaoke at a nearby bar, the Mercantile Club. While most bars no longer allow smoking, this is a social club where one has to sign up for membership, so they are able to smoke cigars in the bar.

There are some general rules to follow while doing this. First, it is considered impolite to sit next to someone who is eating while smoking your cigar. Second, it is generally considered better to sit near the big vents (the “smoke eaters”), as opposed to further away from them. Both of these guidelines make a lot of sense to me.

What doesn’t make sense is the reaction my mother got on a recent Friday. During karaoke, my stepdad was trying a new Dominican blend, attempting to find something to replace a stick which he recently found out was a limited release, and my mom smoked some of the cigar as well, saying she enjoyed the flavor. While my stepdad was away, a man lectured her on the dangers of smoking cigars, and told her she was “too pretty to be doing that anyway.” Let me make clear that I have smoked cigars in the Mercantile Club a number of times—many times with that same man in the bar—and I have never received this lecture.

Maybe a second anecdote will show my point a little clearer. I was in a large cigar store a few weeks ago just hanging out, smoking, reading, and minding my own business. A man, who I’ve never met, let alone ever said anything to, just taps me on the shoulder, points at the TV, and says, “Hey, check out the tits of that brawd.” I ignored him.

Why is it that as soon as one enters a cigar shop, they feel they have a free pass to talk about women in an objectifying manner? Or to treat women cigar smokers differently? While this is not true for everyone, I have a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest it is a prevalent problem. I noticed from working weekends at my cigar lounge that a lot of the older men think that our business is an “escape” for them from their wives, and this gives them an excuse to say anything they want.

Let’s get this straight: A cigar lounge is an environment for anyone, regardless of their gender, race, political affiliation, class, sexual identity, etc.

The fact that my mom had to ask me, “Is there something weird about me smoking a cigar?” disgusts me, and it should disgust anyone involved in this fine hobby. We’re better than this; cigar smokers are some of the best people around. And there is nothing about cigar smoking that makes it an exclusively “male” hobby. If a woman walks into a cigar shop, she should be treated just like anyone else: a customer. And we don’t need to assume, just based on gender, that she only likes mild cigars, or only smokes flavored cigars.

I won’t even get into the realm of borderline-sexist cigar advertisements (yes, we get it; a cigar is phallic in shape). I would just like cigar smokers to think about whether you would like to be coddled or objectified the next time you go to relax and enjoy a smoke.

As always, if any of you have similar stories to share, or thoughts on the matter, please let me know in the comments.

–Joey J

photo credit: N/A

Hopefully cigar connoisseurs have woken up to the threat posed by impending FDA regulation of handmade cigars. If not, it can be summarized like this:

Given what we know about the FDA approval process, if new cigars are required to seek FDA approval before being sold, then effectively there will be no new handmade cigars introduced. When it comes to requiring that type of pre-approval, the FDA has proposed two options: (1) all cigars must get their pre-approval, or (2) the vast majority of cigars must get FDA pre-approval.

Under option two (as it’s referred to in the FDA’s deeming document), a small percentage of new cigars would become exempt by meeting an arbitrarily restrictive definition of “premium cigar.” When it comes to the FDA’s proposed definition, the $10 price floor for a cigar to be “premium” has gotten much attention because it’s so obviously ill-conceived.

Less attention has been paid to the second most problematic aspect of option two’s definition of premium cigars: an effective prohibition (due to the difficulty of FDA approval) on cigars with “characterizing flavor” other than tobacco. Even setting aside definitional problems, like the fact that the Fuente Anejo could be characterized as having a characterizing flavor because the wrappers are aged in rum barrels (or that the FDA has refused to say if cedar aging could be considered “characterizing flavor), there is a big problem with the FDA’s rationale.

The problem with effectively banning new flavored cigars is there is no rational reason to do so. There is no research I’ve seen to suggest that handmade flavored (or infused) cigars are smoked more often by children, nor do they pose any additional health risks.

When President Obama signed the Tobacco Control Act (which authorizes the FDA to regulate tobacco) he said the following: “Removing these flavored products from the market is important because it removes an avenue that young people can use to begin regular tobacco use.” That may be true of cigarettes (and possibly even small cigars and machine-made products), but not cigars like Drew Estate Acid, Rocky Patel Java, or CAO Flavours.

Let’s be honest. Many handmade cigar smokers look down on flavored cigars (my preference is for “traditional” cigars too). But if you think about who you’ve seen buying these cigars, they are still not underage or even particularly young. I strongly suspect much of the survey data that says machine-made cigars in general, and flavored machine-made cigars in particular, may be more likely to be used by youth is a function of them being used in tandem with illegal drugs, which is entirely unrelated to youth smoking issues.

The fact is, all handmade cigars are about flavor, as opposed to being primarily nicotine delivery devices like cigarettes, something the FDA implicitly recognized when considering a premium cigar exemption. And following that logic to it’s conclusion, there’s no reason to discriminate against those who like their cigars with coffee flavors as opposed to full of Nicaraguan Ligero or with a flavorful Broadleaf wrappers.

It’s just another reason why cigar smokers should let their voices be heard during the FDA’s comment period to oppose regulation, including pre-approval of handmade cigars.

–Patrick S

photo credits: Stogie Guys

First, I’d like to apologize for the lack of pipe content in the last couple weeks (you may recall my previous articles on why I smoke a pipe, tools of the trade, beginner pipe blends, and how to properly pack a pipe). I have been in a swamp of finals and term papers finishing up my first semester at graduate school, and I just have had no time to write anything about pipes, much less to smoke any. But, the semester is over, summer is here, and I’m back to smoking! So today we will talk about building cake in a pipe.

So, first off, what is cake? Cake is the term for the carbon build-up left in a pipe after you smoke a bowl of tobacco. Cake is a good thing. You want a nice, even cake lining the bowl of your pipe. This will help keep the smoke cool, and it will also lend a particular flavor to your smoking, depending on what types of tobacco you’ve built that cake with.

A very important thing to remember from this definition is that we want cake to be even. If your pipe’s cake gets too thick, you can crack the pipe and permanently break it. So, anytime you think it might be getting too thick, take the scraping part of your pipe tool and just break it down. Exactly how much cake one wants is up to debate, but the general rule I’ve heard is about the thickness of a dime.

How does one build cake? There are a lot of tricks. Some will tell you to fill your pipe with honey or jelly so that the ash will stick to it, others will recommend plugging the pipe somehow, etc. All of these tricks have one thing in common: They are unproven, and risky. The only way to reliably build cake is to smoke your pipe, evenly, to the bottom of the bowl.

The method I use to break in a pipe takes quite a long time, but it’s a great way to do so, and it ensures you get a consistently even cake. All you’re going to do is pack about a quarter of your pipe and smoke it, all the way to the bottom of the bowl. If you cannot finish all the tobacco in one sitting, just place the pipe down and come back to it. After you’ve done maybe six or eight bowls at a quarter full, bump it up to a half bowl, and, again, smoke six or eight bowls. If you keep doing this, afterwards jumping to 3/4 of a bowl and then finally full bowls, you’ll experience a cool, sweet, broken-in pipe.

If you have any questions about how to build cake, if you have any tobaccos that you think perform particularly well for cake-building (I prefer a burly blend like Prince Albert), or if you have any other experiences or stories about breaking in a pipe, let me know.

–Joey J

photo credit: Flickr

The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) is now seeking comments on its deeming document to regulate cigars under the Tobacco Control Act. Comments are due by July 9 and can be submitted here. (We’ll be putting together some suggested issues to raise in your comments as we get closer to the deadline.)

But as I thought about putting together my comments, I realized there are many significant issues that are almost impossible on which to comment. There are so many questions raised in the deeming document about what the proposal would even look like if implemented. It’s just one of the reasons the FDA should grant the Cigar Association of America extension.

To that end, here are just a few questions the FDA should answer so the public can submit informed comments about the proposal, not just ones based on an overly vague proposal.

What counts as a new cigar?

Under the FDA proposal, new cigars (or, under Option 2, new cigars that don’t meet the definition of a “premium cigar”) must receive the approval of the FDA before they can be sold. Is a new line of five sizes of the same blend one new product or five? Is an annual release of a cigar a new product, or just the same as a previous one? What if the factory where a cigar is made changes, or the sources of tobacco change? Does that make a cigar new?

Does the FDA even have the capacity to regulate cigars?

So far the FDA has approved or denied only 34 out of roughly 4,000 pending applications for new products. Given its current budget constraints, does the FDA have the capacity to rule on the hundreds or thousands (depending on the definition of a new cigar) of new cigars that are released in a given year?

What would be necessary to list the ingredients of a cigar?

One of the rules cigars would have to meet is a “required submission of ingredient listing” to the FDA. Is 100% tobacco leaf adequate? Would manufacturers be required to list the types of tobacco and where they were grown?

What constitutes the “distribution of free samples”?

The proposal includes a “prohibition on the distribution of free samples,” but would that include only samples to consumers? What about free samples at a trade show, or to professional reviewers? Would a buy-one-get-one-free promotion violate this prohibition? Would this only apply to manufacturers, or also to professional tobacconists who might want to give a favorite customer a new cigar to try for free?

What qualifies a cigar as containing “primarily long-filler tobacco”?

The FDA proposal states that under its option for a premium cigar exemption a cigar could qualify if it “contains primarily long-filler tobacco.” Would a Liga Privada Papas Fritas count? It uses clippings from the $10+ Liga Privada No. 9 cigar, but also some long-filler. Would 51% be adequate and, if so, how is that measured?

What do you mean by “characterizing flavor”?

The FDA proposal states that under its option for a premium cigar exemption a cigar would only qualify if it “does not have a characterizing flavor other than tobacco.” Would using tobacco aged in rum barrels (a common practice) be a violation? Would using betunes with wine or curing with aromatic woods like maple, hickory, or oak be a “characterizing flavor”? What about aging a finished cigar in cedar? (The FDA has been asked before about cedar aging and has refused to answer.)

Where did the $10 price floor come from in your option for a premium cigar exemption and how is it applied?

We’ve already covered the problems with the $10 number before. Did this number come from any government or scientific sources, or is it completely random? Also, how is “a retail price (after any discounts or coupons) of no less than $10 per cigar” determined? If the suggested retail price is $10 but it is sold by one retailer for less, is that a violation? And, if so, who violated the rule: the manufacturer or the retailer?

–Patrick S

photo credits: Stogie Guys

I’ve had the privilege to blend three different cigars in the past few years, all thanks to my participation in Drew Estate’s Cigar Safari. In each case I chose a different wrapper. I chronicled the results of my Connecticut Ecuador and Brazilian Mata Fina blends here, and I anticipate writing about my latest, Cameroon-wrapped attempt shortly. (Spoiler alert: The Cameroon smoke is quite good, if I do say so myself.)

Each time I’ve blended a cigar, the process has been similar. I’m presented with a menu of pre-selected, pre-fermented, aged tobaccos. They are organized by filler, binder, and wrapper. Based on the vitola format of my choosing, I’m told how many filler leaves I’ll need. And while barber poles and double-binders are certainly on the market these days, I’m instructed to select just one wrapper and one binder.

Besides a few general rules of thumb (don’t overstuff with Ligero to avoid intensity and burn problems, pick a combination of sweet and spicy tobaccos, etc.), every time I’m stabbing in the dark. For me, the process is all trial and error. I’ll walk around the tobaccos, select some filler leaves, crudely stuff them in a binder, get some wrapper in there, and light the whole bunch on fire to get a sense of the general profile. Extinguish. Re-blend. Repeat.

Usually about 60 minutes is allotted for this exercise. I’d love to have a whole day to do this. Maybe a whole week. But even then it wouldn’t be nearly enough time. When the hour comes to an end, I jot my recipe down and hand it in. Several days later I receive about ten cigars. Thankfully, the folks at Drew Estate don’t make us roll the smokes ourselves; my creations would be unsmokably poor-constructed.

Even if my result doesn’t taste positively top-notch, smoking a cigar you’ve blended is thrilling. I keep my ego in check, though. Remember that Drew Estate had already done all the hard work before I made any decisions. They sourced and selected the tobacco. They cared for it, fermented it, and aged it. And they gave me paragraphs of info on each type of tobacco so even a novice like me can yield something decent.

Going through this exercise several times got me thinking: What exactly is meant by cigar blending? What does someone like Willy Herrera do when he’s hired at Drew Estate before the Herrera Estelí line is launched? What did José Blanco do when he was crafting CyB?

Despite the photos in advertisements and the pictures on boxes, surely the great cigar men are not wandering sun-drenched tobacco fields all day with fedoras and white, button-up shirts with breast pockets brimming with cigars. These strike me as mere photo-ops. What really happens when the rubber meets the road in blending?

I’d imagine the answer varies by company and by individual. But folks I’d consider cigar blenders seem to be engaged at various levels of the process—from seed to smoke, if you will. And their activities (meeting with suppliers, checking tobacco that’s fermenting, producing test blends in various sizes, providing instruction to the buncheros and rolleros, etc.) are differentiated from the business aspects of cigar making (payroll, strategic direction of the company, marketing, budgets, etc.).

Perhaps the best understanding of cigar blending was shared with me by Skip Martin when I visited his RoMa Craft operation in Estelí. At the back of his small factory, he had a table full of cigars that were made 100% with one type of tobacco. Martin says he’s constantly smoking these sticks—some of which are not completely enjoyable on their own, mind you—so he instantly knows what the various tobaccos taste like on their own. He stores these mental snapshots so, as he’s creating test blends and finding areas for improvement, he knows exactly which tobaccos to add and which to remove.

In this fashion, true cigar blenders know what the tobaccos they work with taste like—just like you and I know what peanut butter tastes like without having eaten peanut butter recently. This is what it takes to be a cigar blender. Everyone else, myself included, is simply engaging in trial and error. We lack the skills to add the level of targeted refinement that’s required to yield an excellent cigar.

This realization only adds to my enjoyment of a balanced, harmonious smoke. I hope it does so for you as well.

–Patrick A

photo credit: Stogie Guys

When the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) announced a willingness to exempt premium cigars from forthcoming regulations, it seemed the multi-year campaign to educate regulators about the differences between handmade cigars and most other tobacco products had paid off. Then it became evident that attached to the potential exemption was a devastating definition of premium cigars, including a $10 minimum retail price.

As explained previously, an exemption that includes a $10 minimum price would exclude 85% or more of handmade cigars. The 85% figure comes from numbers put together by Gary Griffith of Emilio Cigars using a sample of 26 stores, but I strongly suspect the real percentage is even higher. For example, $1-2 bundle cigars and factory seconds, which are made with the same techniques as higher cost cigars, are sold in higher numbers through the internet and catalogs. These aren’t fully represented in the 85% figure.

Without the exemption, new cigars (and those introduced since February 15, 2007) would need approval from an FDA that has shown no willingness or ability to do so. The agency has only approved 17 of 4,000 applications in the previous few years (2 were cigarettes, the other 15 applications were for things like wrapping papers). Effectively, there would be no new cigars introduced under an FDA-defined price floor for premium cigars.

The simplest way to look at the $10 figure is as follows: Whoever proposed it is completely ignorant of the handmade cigar market. Not only is there no scientific basis for such a cutoff (nobody can logically claim that a cigar that sells for $10 has public health implications different from one that sells for $9.99 or even $3), but it doesn’t reflect the reality of the handmade cigar market either.

The idea that the very agency authorized to regulate cigars proposed such an unsupported, arbitrary, and even ignorant rule is a scary thought. But as scary as it is, the alternative might be even worse. After all, you can at least educate the ignorant.

While I fully expect that FDA regulators don’t “get it” when it comes to why we enjoy cigars (the experience, the ritual, the camaraderie… the flavor being important and not the nicotine), I doubt they are so ignorant as to genuinely think that $10 is a reasonable line between “premium” and non-premium cigars given the current state of the cigar market.

This is politics—that’s why you hire lobbyists, not scientists, when you’re facing a rule-making process—and the FDA’s proposal is a classic political position: the ultimate threat paired with an offer to “negotiate” for something less devastating.

I’ve heard throughout the FDA process representatives of the cigar industry have been pressured to adopt a definition that included a minimum price. They’ve correctly resisted, because there is no scientific or public health reason to create an arbitrary price. Supposedly the FDA is still interested in truth and health.

Fans of the Game of Thrones HBO series will instantly recognize the image above. (If you haven’t read the first book or seen the show, I’m about to spoil the ending of the first season.) It’s the moment just before hero Eddard Stark is beheaded, after confessing to a crime he didn’t commit in order to protect his daughters and have his life spared.

If the FDA’s proposal is as calculated as I’m afraid it might be, then the handmade cigar industry shares many similarities to Stark’s dilemma. In its deeming document, the FDA pointedly left open “Option 1,” which would regulate all cigars, effectively killing the development of all new cigars.

“Option 2” is an exemption for some “premium” cigars, but the FDA is signaling that that it might be merciful, especially if the industry agrees to embrace an arbitrary, artificial, and unscientific price floor. In other words: If your false confession doesn’t sufficiently please us, we’ll just cut off your head. It didn’t work out well for Stark.

The cigar blog Halfwheel made the point yesterday that the $10 rule seems unlikely to survive, and it’s certainly true that a definition that uses “retail price (after any discounts or coupons)” is impractical. But that’s not necessarily a reason to rejoice.

In fact, it’s likely part of the set-up. A common negotiating tactic is a wildly low-ball opening offer, so the person you’re negotiating with feels they’ve won something when they agree to the real price you had in mind all along.

That may be what’s really going on here. If I told you a week ago that the final exemption would only apply to cigars with a wholesale price above $3 (roughly $6 at retail), you might have responded: That’s crazy! There are tons of handmade cigars that cost less than that and no public health reason to treat them differently than a cigar that costs more. Now, with the sword hovering over all cigars, some might think $3 a reasonable compromise to embrace.

The fact is, without an artificial price in the rule, there’s still a natural limit to how inexpensive a handmade cigar can be and still meet the rest of the requirements in “Option 2” of the proposed rule (some of which have their own problems that can be addressed in a future article). A completely handmade cigar, made primarily with long-filler tobacco, will have to cost a certain amount or it won’t be economically viable, and those looking just for nicotine will still find that pre-2007 cigarettes or other non-handmade cigars do a more efficient, cheaper job of delivering that. Further, even if unforeseeable developments prove this to be wrong, then the FDA can always do more rule-making to deal with any remaining issues.

Maybe I’m just jaded and the $10 requirement was born out of ignorance, and a thorough effort to educate the FDA will make the final rule reality-based. We should be so lucky, but I’m not sure I’d bet on it.

More likely I’m afraid we’re being set up to accept, perhaps even advocate for, drawing a line that doesn’t exist. And then feeling like we’ve won something when we get an arbitrary line that isn’t as bad as it could have been.

The FDA’s regulation of tobacco is supposed to be a fact-based process. By acknowledging the fact that premium cigars are different, the agency has implied that a reality-based line should be drawn, and I expect the handmade cigar industry will respond with comments showing why an arbitrary price definition is not based in science.

If the FDA ignores those comments and demonstrates that it is just playing politics, the result will be terrible. Not only would it destroy a thriving industry that caters exclusively to adults and provides thousands of American jobs, but it would betray the mandate that Congress gave the FDA to create reasonable regulations based in science and logic.

–Patrick S

photo credits: Stogie Guys / Game of Thrones