by Steve Saka

You should stop whenever the flavor becomes less pleasing to your taste buds. Sometimes this will be when a full third or more of the cigar is remaining, while other cigars you will want to smoke down until your fingers begin to burn.

The term "finish" refers to the flavor and textures the smoke leaves in your mouth after every puff and not the end of the cigar. Essentially the word is utilized for a cigar in the same way as it describes the finish of a wine. Many people inadvertently misuse this word to mean the flavor of their cigar as the "finish" smoking it. A better term for this is "ends", i.e. "the cigar ends with potent flavors of uninhibited ligero."

The Habana Sancho Panza Non Plus can be a pretty tasty Marevas, but they are not always consistent. Sometimes these 5 x 42 petite coronas are a bit too mild for me, and I find their flavor can vary. I wouldn't dismiss them however, because when "they are good, they are really good." If you are craving a strong Cuban short smoke I would suggest you try the Ramon Allones Small Club Corona, Partagas Shorts, and the Bolivar Coronas Junior. All three of these are exceptional cigars, reasonably priced, and really deliver in the "pop" department.

It is when the torcedor (roller) bunches the cigar improperly by folding many or most of the leaves in half from one side rather then using an accordion fold or tubing the filler. If you look at the foot of a "booked" bunch you will see that the side where the fold resides is very thick and dense. It is called "booking" and/or "booked" because the way the filler is folded resembles the view you would get by looking down upon the top edge of a book - a thick folded side looks like the spine where all the pages of a book are bound. Almost always these are very poor burning and smoking cigars and are a common trait of cigars rolled by inexperienced or poor rollers.

There are actually three different EMS stamps on boxes in circulation. The stamps themselves are place on the boxes of cigars by the UK importer Hunters and Frankau as a identifier that the box has been inspected for quality by the importer and to serve as an additional measure against counterfeiters. The original stamp was a money green paper one that was place on Havana's imported into the UK between June 1992 and October 1997. It was replaced by a new style stamp in November 1997 that was smaller, printed on glossy stock with a watermark design with gold foil added to the lion crest and pink in color. Then in October of 1998 the pink stamp was replaced by the blue ones in current use. My understanding is that Hunters and Frankau intend to change the color of the stamp every autumn from here on out.

   

"Wrinkly wrappers" are typically caused by cigars which have experienced cycles of being over-humidified and then under-humidified. By the way, this is commonly called "crinkle" by many cigar collectors. It is the end result of the cigar's wrapper being stretched by the expanding filler when moist and the subsequent shrinkage when it dries. Basically they are just like "stretch marks."

These are very common in vintage cigars even if kept within ideal conditions. Over time the continuous shifting of a couple of points of %RH will result in wrinkles. Also, this is not that uncommon in cooledors since the humidity tends to shoot up and down drastically with opening and closing. Unlike a wooden humidor, a cooler's plastic is unable to retain an ambient RH. The longer a cigar has been stored the more likely wrinkles are to occur.

Other than damaging the aesthetics, it typically does not impact the smoke. However, the wrappers will become more brittle as the wrinkling continues to occur and may eventually lead to cracking and splitting.

NEXT EDITIONS:  Edition.02 | Edition.03 | Edition.04