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Ask cigar smokers around the world which country produces the best cigars and
quite often the answer you’ll get will be ‘Cuba’. But is that really the case or
is it just a myth?
There’s no doubt that Cuba certainly does produce some fine cigars and many
people point to the cigars that use tobacco leaf from the Vuelta Abajo district
in Pinar del Rio as the finest example of Cuban cigars. But using the quality of
the tobacco leaf from one small area in a country as an indicator of quality for
all cigars that come out of that country is quite a large leap of faith and one
that may not be justified.
While the contents of a cigar are important, there are other factors that can
affect the quality and even if the tobacco leaf used in the cigar is the finest
available the binder and the wrapper may be quite inferior and they can have
quite an effect on the overall quality of a cigar.
On top of that not every cigar produced by a certain country will contain the
very best tobacco leaf. Not every tobacco-growing region in a country produces
the same quality leaf and even in Cuba the product of some regions can be quite
inferior when compared to what is produced in other countries.
And then we come to the production of cigars. In Cuba, the Government controls
the production of cigars and sometimes the quality control can be lacking. The
quality may be less depending on who rolls the cigars. Perhaps the roller had a
bad day.
While the hype is that Cuban cigar rollers are the best in the world the reality
is that there are just as many talented cigar rollers in other countries as
there are in Cuba and not every Cuban cigar roller is as talented as the hype
would have you believe.
The fact that Cuba is still thought of as being the home of the finest cigars is
now more likely to come from clever and persistent marketing, or just old-fashioned thinking.
In fact, the overall level of quality can be the same regardless of the country
that the cigar was produced in. Other Central American countries deserve to
be considered if you’re looking for the best quality in cigars. Cigars produced
in Honduras, Nicaragua and even the Dominican Republic all have a legitimate
claim to producing cigars that are at least equal to those produced in Cuba. In
this writer's opinion, the
La
Aurora 1495 (made in Dominican Republic),
Padron 1964 Anniversary (made in Honduras and Nicaragua) and
Rocky Patel Vintage 1990 (using 18 year old Honduran Broadleaf wrapper) are
all just as good as some of the best Cuban Cigars.
Ultimately though, trying to decide which country produces the best cigars is a
moot point. All the major cigar producing countries make some cigars that are
excellent, some average, and some not so good. Another important difference to
note is that Cuban cigars only use Cuban Tobacco. This is referred to as a "Puro"
regardless of country of origin. Any cigar that uses tobacco from only one
country is a puro. Puros can be great cigars. The
Arturo Fuente OpusX is a Dominican Puro and it is considered by many to be
one of the best cigars in the world. However, most cigars (except for Cuban) are
blends of tobaccos from different regions. This affords the opportunity to
broaden your taste horizons, which is another benefit of not limiting yourself
to Cuban cigars.
It’s up to you to decide which cigars suit your
tastes and which cigars you would personally recommend as being the best. Make
no mistake. There are some Cuban cigars that are phenomenal. However, declaring that
all Cuban cigars are the best is narrow, shallow-minded thinking, or just
misinformation. However, if you would like to be thought of as a "Habano-Nazi",
then go right ahead and proclaim Cuban's as being the best.
For some reason, perhaps a desire to be thought of as one of the "cool kids", or
that they know something about cigars, many people still bring up "Cuban Cigars"
in any conversation where the topic of cigars arises. They believe that Cubans
are the best and nothing else is worthy. The reality is quite different. Don’t blindly follow this
line of thinking. Try cigars produced in
all the major cigar-producing countries with the expectation that they really could be better than the
Cuban product because, the chances are, that they will be.
On the other hand, if you want everyone to know that you are a “newbie” or that
you know nothing about cigars, say something like, “I only smoke Cuban cigars”,
or walk into a shop in the US and ask for Cuban cigars. They are illegal here …
still.
You can see a great post
here describing cigar tobacco from several different countries.
