Cigar Storage Wisdom – Part I

How you store your cigars is of crucial importance to how they will smoke.

If you’re a seasoned cigar lover, you can be forgiven for neglecting this crucial element of the passion and forgetting how key it is to every aspect of enjoying cigars that follows on from its deployment.

Time, we feel, for a little cigar storage 101 – which may spill over into a blog or two…

Let’s start from the beginning.

The best cigar tobacco grows in tropical climes, and one needs to go some way to recreate that in order to keep the tobacco at its best – even after it has been rolled into a cigar.

This is why cigars are stored in carefully controlled conditions. These carefully controlled conditions can be in the form of a large, humidified room, known as a walk-in humidor; all the way down to small travel humidors, desktop and cabinet versions. All are designed to do the same thing – maintain a regular temperature and relative humidity to keep your cigars in good condition to smoke, or indeed to age. More on ageing later.

It is traditionally said as a loose guide that a humidor should be kept at 70 degrees centigrade and 70% relative humidity. Why? Because this goes some way to replicate the ideal tropical conditions that tobacco leaf both survives and thrives in.

Of course, there is some leeway within these figures; different cigar lovers may have their own particular reason for tinkering with these levels. It is generally accepted that if you lay down your cigars for long-term ageing, like you may do with a fine wine, it is best to keep them both a little cooler and with a little less humidity – say a 65/65 ratio.

Now, Sautter owner Laurence Davis likes to smoke his ‘regular’ cigars quite moist; he will store them with up to 80% humidity for immediate smoking. On the other end of the scale, Edward Sahakian, the legendary owner of Davidoff of London, prefers a dry smoke, and keeps his cigars at a significantly lower humidity level.

Over time, you will find the levels that suit the preferences of your palate, but as long as you stay within certain parameters, this will be, once again, down to personal choice.

If the cigars become too damp, the wrapper can swell and burst, affecting the burn, taste and enjoyment; too dry, and they lose all their flavour, burning hot and bitter.

A word here, to the wise; beware the Tobacco Weevil.

It is seldom seen these days, thanks to the increasing use of freezing facilities at the factories, which kill off most potential larvae and eggs within otherwise perfectly good tobacco leaves. A few critters may survive this, though, and, if neglected, can decimate an entire collection in a matter of days and weeks. So beware.

If the temperature in your humidor becomes too high, it encourages the hatching of tobacco weevil eggs, which may sometimes be present in the leaves. These are normally not a concern for your precious cigars, especially if you keep the temperature lower than 70 degrees centigrade, and their presence has no effect on the burn, taste or quality of the cigar.

However, if the weevil larvae do hatch, they can munch their way into many cigars in a remarkably short space of time. It is not unknown for whole humidors to be affected and once they are present, they are very difficult to eradicate. Their presence can be identified by tiny, perfectly spherical, pin-prick holes in the barrel of your cigars, caused as the larvae tunnels out in search of its next smoke to snack on. This boring also creates talcum powder-like tobacco dust that will gather in the bottom of your humidor or cigar boxes.