A ripe old age
As with all of us, there are ups and downs to the ageing of cigars, confides Bolivar
There are ups and downs to the ageing of cigars, confides Bolivar
THE ageing of cigars is one of the most fascinating and least understood aspects of their enjoyment. A cigar is many things, not least an ongoing biochemical process. As a natural product, it’s changing all the time and this can be exacerbated, accelerated or slowed down by external factors such as heat, cold, moisture or dryness.
Constantly altering in flavour, character and strength, it is this mutability that makes cigars so absorbing and it’s tempting to draw parallels with wine. Like wine, a cigar is a gourmet delicacy that begins life as an agricultural product. Like vines, tobacco plants are influenced by geography and climate, susceptible to pests and enhanced by talented farmers.
The difference is that, although a great bottle of wine tends to be made with grapes from one place and one year, a cigar is assembled using leaves from different plantations, grown in different conditions, harvested at different times and treated differently in terms of fermentation and maturation. They are then put together and the date stamp on the box will tell you little more than when the finished cigars were put into it.
Recent years have seen some Cuban cigars being released and smoked too young (in my opinion) and this has shaped tastes among some smokers for the harsher flavours of youth. For me, the tell-tale whiff of ammonia from a freshly opened box is a certain sign that more time is required.
Even limited-edition cigars, in which all of the tobacco used is supposed to be at least two years old, are sometimes in such a hurry that it seems they’re rolled, boxed and shipped as fast as possible.
The best cigars made with aged tobacco (not necessarily the same thing as an aged cigar) have been the Reservas—launched in Cuba in 2003, made with tobacco kept in bales for a minimum of three years —and Gran Reservas— first appearing in 2009, containing tobacco with a minimum of five years’ bale age. If you come across the Partagás Serie D No.4 Reserva, the Romeo y Julieta Churchill Reserva or the Partagás Lusitania Gran Reserva, do not, under any circumstances, pass up the opportunity to sit down and enjoy them.
The Havana cigar is by no means as predictable as a bottle of wine, in which the maturation follows a curved trajectory, rising to an optimum drinking time, plateauing and declining. A cigar’s journey resembles the waves on an oscilloscope— which is both good and bad news. As a vague rule of thumb, a mild cigar such as an H. Upmann or El Rey del Mundo will benefit from up to five years of ageing. A medium-strength cigar such as a Romeo or a Montecristo will benefit from up to 10 years and the larger, fullerflavoured cigars such as Bolivar, Partagás and Cohiba can take more than a decade to reach their full potential. However, even a couple of years will yield tangible results, provided they’re kept in dark, cool, stable conditions with the correct relative humidity.
After they’ve reached their full potential, different cigars will behave in different ways. Min Ron Nee—whose illustrated encyclopaedia of post-revolution Havana cigars is essential reading—has a well-developed scientific theory: ‘As time goes by, when tannin breaks down into simpler molecules, these molecules react with other chemicals to form more organic molecules. As a result, a lot of different pleasant flavours are generated in addition.’ It’s at this point in the cigar’s development that it may behave in a way that’s ‘uncharacteristic’ of the blend.
The difficulty, then, is to know at which point to intercept it. This requires constant monitoring and tasting as they age and a rigorous, almost scientific approach, with each cigar you smoke documented as if it were a school project. Although I try to keep tasting notes, my lack of organisation gets the better of me.
There is one simple way to overcome these hurdles and that is to enjoy your cigars from a merchant who has been conscientiously caring for them, such as those in the Edward Sahakian Special Reserve at Davidoff—among some of the gems available there in the past are Hoyo and Punch Double Coronas from the 1990s, Hoyo Petit Robustos from 2004, Montecristo No 1s from 2005 and Romeo y Julieta Escudos from 2007, the latter unremarkable a decade ago, but delicious today.
After all, tasting notes and academic study of organic molecules are all very well, but, sometimes, I just want to enjoy a cigar rather than prepare for an O level.
‘which The difficulty is to know at point to intercept it’