50 Fun Facts About Cigar

Which of the three components of a modern cigar is usually made from the highest-quality leaf?

The wrapper is the costliest and most flawless leaf in a cigar; its shade, from claro to oscuro, is often used to describe the whole cigar.

The word 'cigar' ultimately derives from a word in which language?

The English word only came into general use in 1730, by way of the Spanish 'cigarro'.

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

The Taino of Cuba were seen by the 1492 expedition's scouts sucking smoke from dried herbs rolled in a leaf, which they called tabacos, as Bartolomé de las Casas recorded.

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 Revolutionary War general 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, 90 miles from Cuba, received Ybor's El Príncipe de Gales factory in 1869 as he fled the Ten Years' War; other Havana makers followed him.

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 hand-rolled cigars did the Ybor City area produce in its 1929 peak year?

Over 500 million hand-rolled cigars came out of the district's factories in the 1929 peak, before the Depression and machine-made cigars drove production into decline.

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

The chaveta, a flat crescent-shaped blade, trims leaves and shapes the bunch; a skilled roller can turn out a hundred or more cigars a day.

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

A hired reader, known as the lector, read newspapers and novels aloud from a platform while the rollers worked, and the workers paid his wages themselves.

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

Santiago de los Caballeros, in the Cibao valley of the Dominican Republic, is ringed by tobacco farms and cigar factories and is often called the country's cigar capital.

In which year did Cigar Aficionado magazine launch?

Cigar Aficionado's first issue appeared in September 1992 from Marvin Shanken, publisher of Wine Spectator, and the magazine helped spark that decade's cigar boom.

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 comes from the top primings, where the most sun makes the leaf thickest and strongest; because it burns slowly it is folded into the middle of the filler bunch.

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

Puro is Spanish for 'pure'; a puro's filler, binder and wrapper all come from one country, as with most Cuban cigars.

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 the straight-sided standard shapes such as coronas and robustos, typically with a rounded cap; irregular shapes like torpedoes and pyramids are figurados.

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

Cuaba, launched by Habanos in 1996, makes only figurados such as the Salomones and Divinos, reviving shapes that had all but vanished by the 1930s.

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 splinter of cedar known as what?

A spill is a thin strip of cedar lit from a candle or match; some cigars come in cedar sleeves that can be split and used the same way.

At roughly what relative humidity are most cigars best stored?

Around 65-70% relative humidity keeps cigars supple; dry cigars turn fragile and burn fast, while damp ones burn unevenly and pick up an acidic taste.

Which wood is the classic lining for a humidor?

Spanish cedar, in fact a tropical relative of mahogany, lines humidors because it holds moisture, repels tobacco beetles and lends a pleasant aroma.

The tobacco beetle, one of the two most damaging pests to the cigar industry, has what scientific name?

Lasioderma serricorne, the cigarette or tobacco beetle, bores pinholes through stored cigars; Ephestia elutella, the tobacco moth, is the other great enemy of stored leaf.

The expression 'close but no cigar' comes from cigars being given away as prizes where?

Fairground games in early-20th-century America handed out cigars as prizes, so a near miss at the strongman hammer or ring toss was 'close but no cigar'.

In which year did US cigar consumption peak at 13.8 billion?

In 2012 Americans consumed 13.8 billion cigars, up from 6.2 billion in 2000; consumption then slid to 11.4 billion by 2015.

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, whose San Juan y Martínez and San Luis districts supply the few select fields chosen for Cohiba.

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

Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo was a favourite of the factory readers; the Edmundo size, added in 2004, is named for its hero Edmond Dantès.

The Montecristo No. 4 was the preferred cigar of which revolutionary?

Che Guevara favoured the Montecristo No. 4, a petit corona; the size has long ranked as the best-selling Havana cigar and a common starting point for newcomers.

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.

In 2009 Montecristo renamed a planned new line from 'Sport' to 'Open' because of what?

EU rules on tobacco and sports imagery forced the change, though the Open line's vitolas Eagle, Master, Regata and Junior nod to golf and yachting.

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

Winston Churchill visited Havana in 1946 and the brand named its 7 by 47 size after him; owner Pepin Rodriguez also raced a horse named Julieta.

In which year was the Romeo y Julieta marque established in Cuba?

Romeo y Julieta dates from 1875, founded in Havana by Inocencio Álvarez and Mannin García; Pepin Rodriguez bought it in 1903 and made it world famous.

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

Hermann Upmann was a banker from Bremen who opened a Havana bank in 1844 and began making cigars the same year, at first as gifts for clients.

How many Cuban cigars did JFK have gathered the night before signing the Cuban embargo?

Press secretary Pierre Salinger delivered 1,200 H. Upmann petit coronas the next morning, 200 more than the 1,000 Kennedy had asked for, and the embargo was signed at once.

During World War I, the Upmann brothers used their Cuban cigar and banking 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 went bankrupt 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 cigars wrapped in silk to avoid staining her fingers, inspiring the cigar band?

Catherine the Great is the monarch in the legend, though historians dismiss it; the tale says her courtiers copied the silk ribbons, which evolved into paper bands.

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 business holding $1,161 in assets and no debt; his father Arturo had founded it in Florida in 1912.

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

Nicaragua's Jalapa valley tobacco had won over José Orlando Padrón, who set up in Estelí in 1970 despite the country's political turmoil.

The Partagás brand's founder, Don Jaime Partagás, met what fate in 1868?

He was murdered on one of his plantations in 1868, reportedly over a love affair; his son José took over the firm Jaime had founded in Havana in 1845.

Daniel Carter Beard's 1884 plans described a banjo made from what?

A cigar box formed the body in Beard's 1884 five-string banjo plans; homemade cigar-box instruments later became staples of jug bands and early blues.

Which poet wrote the famous 1886 smoking poem The Betrothed?

Rudyard Kipling's The Betrothed ends with the line 'a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke', written when cigarettes were far rarer than cigars.

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

Hartford's Connecticut River valley is where the Cuban seed was reportedly planted after the Seven Years' War, and the region's tobacco later produced the famous Connecticut shade wrapper.

Cigar tubes that hold one or five cigars are described by their number of what?

Fingers count the cigars a case or tube holds, so a three-finger case carries three; usually stainless steel or leather, they suit short trips rather than long storage.

Which Dominican-based maker has produced figurados shaped like chili peppers, baseball bats and footballs?

Arturo Fuente has made these novelty figurados, mostly in its OpusX line; they are highly collectible and extremely expensive when they reach the public at all.

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

Cameroon wrapper, a toothy, neutral-flavoured leaf grown from Sumatran seed, is a name also applied to leaf from the neighbouring Central African Republic.