Tuesday, September 14 2010
Having been a cigar smoker for more years than I'd care to admit, here's something I've noticed; some cigars have held up pretty well over the years, while I've lost my taste for others. The question is, is it me or the cigar?
Every so often I get an email from a cigar smoker who wants to know if the factory changed the blend because the cigars they've been smoking for x number of years suddenly don't taste the same anymore. In most cases, the blend hasn't changed at all, plus the manufacturer and/or the retailer will usually announce a major blend change, as Perdomo did with their Cuban Bullet Ver. 2.0 cigars, for example. So again, is it the smoker or the cigar?
First of all, the very nature of
handmade premium cigars alone cannot guarantee the blend will taste exactly the same
box to box, or more to the point, year to year. Based on the harvests, which vary each year, that fact alone would lend itself to a certain amount of inconsistency. Sure, every now and then you'll get the odd "bad box," but even so, it's amazing how many brands actually have remained consistent in flavor over the years. There are too many to mention here, but a few that immediately come to mind are
Macanudo,
Arturo Fuente, and
Padron cigars.
Then there's the part of the question that points to the cigar smoker himself (or herself, as the case may be). As we smoke cigars over the years we develop a palate for a certain flavor/strength profile. Moreover, as our palates develop our tastes change, and a cigar that we may have loved when we first started smoking cigars may no longer be among our current favorites.
Since it goes without saying that our favorites tend to be those cigars that still taste as good now as they did then, I want to open-up this dialogue by asking which cigars have remained true to you over the years, and which cigars just don't do it for you anymore.
Thanks,
G~
