49 Fun Facts About Cigar

On the cigar wrapper colour scale, which of these terms marks the darkest leaf?

Maduro marks a very dark brown wrapper, a shade brought on by sun or prolonged fermentation; the colour is no indication of a cigar's strength, and dark leaf tends to add a touch of sweetness.

The word 'cigar' is thought to derive, via Spanish, from a word in which language?

Mayan sikar, 'to smoke rolled tobacco leaves', probably gave Spanish its cigarro, though a rival theory points to cigarra, the cicada, for the shape.

European explorers first observed cigar smoking among which indigenous people in 1492?

The Taino of Cuba smoked twisted tobacco leaves wrapped in a palm leaf or maize husk, and their word for the rolls, cohiba, now names the island's flagship cigar brand.

Which French ambassador to Portugal sent tobacco to the French court in 1560?

Jean Nicot, ambassador in Lisbon from 1559, sent tobacco to Catherine de' Medici as a remedy in 1560; the genus Nicotiana and nicotine carry his name.

Which Connecticut general of the Revolutionary War is believed to have brought Havana cigars home from the Seven Years' War?

Israel Putnam, who served in the 1762 British capture of Havana, is said to have returned to Connecticut with a load of Havana cigars and Cuban tobacco seed.

In 1869 Vicente Martinez Ybor moved his cigar operations from Havana to which US city?

Key West received Ybor's El Príncipe de Gales factory in 1869 as he left Havana in the turmoil of the Ten Years' War; other Cuban makers followed him, and the town became a cigar-making centre.

Ybor City, once nicknamed the 'Cigar Capital of the World', is a neighborhood of which Florida city?

Tampa absorbed Ybor City, founded by Vicente Martinez Ybor in the 1880s; its cigar workers came mainly from Cuba, Spain and Italy, earning Tampa the nickname 'Cigar City'.

Roughly how many cigars did Ybor City's factories hand-roll in the peak year of 1929?

500 million cigars left Ybor City's factories in 1929; then the Depression pushed smokers to cheaper cigarettes and makers to machines, and hand-rolling collapsed.

What is the name of the crescent-shaped knife a cigar roller uses to shape the leaves?

The chaveta is a crescent of flat steel that the roller uses to cut each wrapper leaf to size and to shape the head, quickly enough to turn out hundreds of near-identical cigars a day.

Historically, who was employed to entertain workers on a cigar factory floor?

A hired reader, the lector, was engaged by the rollers themselves to read newspapers and novels aloud as they worked; the custom still survives in a number of Cuban cigar factories.

Which Dominican city in the Cibao valley is the centre of the country's cigar industry?

Santiago de los Caballeros owes its cigar trade to the fertile Cibao valley around it, where much of the country's premium tobacco is grown; rum and cigars are among its leading exports.

Which magazine shares a publisher with Cigar Aficionado?

Wine Spectator's owner, Marvin Shanken, launched Cigar Aficionado in autumn 1992, and the premium-cigar boom that began that year peaked in 1997.

In cigar terminology, 'capa' is the Spanish word for which part of the cigar?

Capa is the outermost leaf of the cigar, while the binder beneath it is the capote; the finest capa leaf is grown under gauze canopies for a smooth, thinly veined surface.

Which filler leaf, from the sun-drenched top of the tobacco plant, is the strongest and spiciest?

Ligero means 'light' in Spanish, yet it is the strongest filler: the top leaves get the most sun and grow thickest, and their slow burn puts them in the middle of the bunch.

A cigar made entirely from tobacco grown in a single country is known in the trade by what name?

Puro, once simply a Spanish word for a cigar, now means one whose filler, binder and outer leaf all come from a single country, which makes every Cuban cigar a puro.

A cigar's ring gauge measures its diameter in what unit?

Ring gauge counts sixty-fourths of an inch, so a 7 by 47 cigar is seven inches long and 47/64 of an inch across.

What is the collective term for a cigar's size and shape?

Vitola covers a cigar's length, ring gauge and shape; Cuban factories separate the factory vitola from the commercial name, so one size can carry several brand names.

Straight-sided cigars with a rounded cap, the benchmark for other formats, are called what?

Parejos are straight-sided cigars such as coronas and lonsdales; the shape is the easiest and cheapest to roll, which is why irregular figurados usually cost more.

Which Cuban brand's range consists only of figurado shapes?

Cuaba, launched in London in 1996, makes only double figurados, tapered at both ends, reviving a shape that was all the rage for Havana cigars at the end of the 19th century.

Which of these is a standard type of cigar cutter?

The guillotine, a straight single- or double-bladed cutter, is the most common style; punch and V-cut are the other standard ways to open the cap.

The traditional way to light a cigar uses a thin strip of wood known as what?

A spill is lit first from a candle, match or lighter and then used to toast the foot of the cigar; it burns slowly, and some cigar bars use spills more than a foot long.

Which instrument shows whether a cigar humidor is holding its moisture?

A hygrometer reads the relative humidity inside, which most humidors hold near 70 percent; drier cigars turn fragile and burn fast, while damper ones burn unevenly.

Which wood is the classic lining for a humidor?

Spanish cedar, in fact a tropical relative of mahogany and no true cedar, lines humidors because it holds moisture without warping and its scented resin deters insects.

A tiny, perfectly round hole bored in a stored cigar is the mark of which pest?

The tobacco beetle, Lasioderma serricorne, starts as eggs laid in the leaf; if a humidor gets too warm they hatch, and the beetle burrows out through the cigar.

The expression 'close but no cigar' is thought to come from cigars being given away as prizes where?

Fairground games in the United States are the likeliest origin, though no firm proof survives: stalls gave cigars as prizes, so a player who came close still went home without one.

Which cigar, a traditional smoke of Burma and India, is cut square at both ends with no cap?

Cheroot cigars are clipped at both ends and need no cutting; long traditional in India and Burma, they became a favourite of the British there during the days of empire.

Cuban Cohiba was established in 1966 as a private brand supplied exclusively to whom?

Cohiba began in 1966 as a private brand for Fidel Castro and top officials, also serving as diplomatic gifts; it was not sold publicly until 1982.

Which historical figure does Cohiba's Siglo series of cigars commemorate?

Christopher Columbus is honoured by the Línea 1492, launched on the 500th anniversary of his landing; each Siglo size marks one century since, with Siglo VI added in 2002.

Cohiba tobacco comes from the Vuelta Abajo region of which Cuban province?

Pinar del Río, Cuba's westernmost province, holds the Vuelta Abajo; Cohiba takes leaf from a handful of chosen fields there and gives its filler an extra fermentation in barrels for a smoother taste.

The Montecristo brand takes its name from a novel by which author?

Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo is said to have been a favourite on the rolling floor of the Havana factory where the brand began in 1935; the Edmundo size, added in 2004, is named for its hero.

Which revolutionary called a smoke in times of rest 'a great companion to the solitary soldier'?

Che Guevara wrote it in his handbook Guerrilla Warfare, listing tobacco in a fighter's pack beside a hammock, a blanket, salt and a canteen; he smoked himself, despite lifelong asthma.

The Montecristo logo is a triangle of six swords surrounding what symbol?

A fleur-de-lis sits inside the triangle of six crossed swords; the logo was designed by the brand's British distributor, John Hunter Morris and Elkan Co.

The slang word 'stogie' comes from Conestoga, a wagon-building district in which US state?

Pennsylvania's Conestoga district, near Lancaster, gave its name to the covered wagon, and the long, cheap cigars its drivers favoured were shortened from 'Conestoga' to 'stogies'.

Romeo y Julieta's flagship 7-inch, 47-ring-gauge cigar is named for which famous devotee?

Winston Churchill, famous for almost never being seen without a cigar, gave his name to the brand's 7 by 47 flagship, and 'Churchill' is now the trade's word for any cigar of that size.

Romeo y Julieta cigars are named for a tragedy set in which Italian city?

Verona is the setting of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, whose Spanish title the Havana brand took at its founding in 1875; under Pepín Rodríguez in the early 1900s it won fame around the world.

H. Upmann, one of the oldest cigar brands, was founded in Havana by a man of what profession?

Hermann Upmann was a banker who reached Havana in the 1840s, bought a local cigar factory in 1844 and opened a bank alongside it, at first serving tobacco dealers and manufacturers.

Which president had 1,200 Cuban cigars gathered the night before signing the embargo on Cuban goods?

Kennedy asked press secretary Pierre Salinger for about 1,000 Petit Upmanns; told next morning that 1,200 had been found, he took out the embargo decree and signed it.

During World War I, the Upmann brothers used their Cuban cigar business as cover for what?

A German intelligence network ran behind the Upmann firm; the US put it on its very first Enemy Trading List in December 1917, and the business collapsed in 1922.

Historians credit which Cuba-based European immigrant with inventing the cigar band in the 1830s?

Gustave Bock ordered paper rings bearing his signature for every cigar he exported to Europe, and by the 1850s nearly all Cuban makers had adopted bands.

Which monarch, by legend, had her cigars wrapped in silk to avoid stains, inspiring the cigar band?

Catherine the Great is the monarch in the legend, whose courtiers are said to have copied her silk wrappings; cigar historians instead trace the paper band to a Havana maker's export labels.

Swiss tobacconist Zino Davidoff, known as the 'King of Cigars', is credited with inventing what?

The desktop humidor is Davidoff's credited invention, keeping cigars at shop-cellar humidity at home; he also named a 1946 cigar series after Bordeaux estates such as Château Margaux and Château Latour.

In 1958 Carlos Fuente Sr. bought the struggling family cigar business from his father for how much?

For $1 Carlos Fuente Sr. took over a firm with $1,161 in assets, no debt and an output of only a few thousand cigars a year, then went after new accounts across Florida and in New York.

Padrón Cigars, founded in Miami in 1964, moved its production in 1970 to which country?

Nicaragua's Jalapa valley tobacco won over José Orlando Padrón, who moved production to Estelí in 1970; when rioters later burned the factory he rebuilt it and opened a second across the border in Honduras.

How did cigar maker Jaime Partagás die in 1868?

He was murdered on one of his plantations in the Vuelta Abajo in 1868, and his son José took over the Havana firm Jaime had founded in 1845.

Boy Scouts co-founder Daniel Carter Beard published plans in 1884 for turning a cigar box into which instrument?

A banjo: Beard's 'Uncle Enos' plans built a five-string fretless model on a cigar box, and homemade cigar-box guitars and fiddles later helped fuel jug bands and the blues.

Which poet wrote 'a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke' in The Betrothed?

Rudyard Kipling took his cue from a breach-of-promise case in which a woman told her fiancé, 'You must choose between me and your cigar'; his narrator keeps the cigars.

Cuban tobacco seeds planted near which New England city reportedly led to the shade-grown Connecticut wrapper?

Hartford's stretch of the Connecticut River valley is where the Cuban seed was reportedly planted; from 1900 growers nearby raised wrapper leaf under cloth tents that cut the sunlight and held in humidity.

Pocket cigar cases are sized by how many cigars they hold, counted in what?

Fingers are the separate slots of a pocket case, so a three-finger case carries three cigars, each held apart so none rolls about; most have no humidifier and suit an outing, not storage.

Which African country gives its name to a prized cigar wrapper leaf?

Cameroon lends its name to a dark, toothy wrapper leaf, and tobacco grown across the border in the Central African Republic is sold under the same name.