Blog & Cigar News | Mardo Cigars

What's up, everybody? This is Gerard of mardocigars.com, and you are watching part two of our three-part series on the production of cigars from seed to store.

Before we begin, I need you to click on the subscribe button as well as the bell to be notified every single week of Mondays with Mardo's. Okay. So in this episode we're going to talk about the parts of the plant. We're going to talk about blending cigars as well as how they are rolled.

Parts of the Plant

All right. Before we start talking about blending and rolling cigars, we're going to go right into the plant. It plays a very intricate part. It has about 16 leaves. The top portion of the plant are very tiny leaves and they're very thick and called the ligero. Now the ligero is used in the binder and also in the filler to give the cigar some strength.

When you move down a little bit, you're going to get into viso, and you're going to get into the seco section. These leaves are going to be a little bit bigger because they're reaching out for more sunlight. They're going to be a little bit thinner, and this section of the plant is going to be primarily used in the filler section, and that is going to be more for flavor.

When you move down to the lower part of the plant, it's going to give you the volado. Now, the volado span very, very big and they're going to be looking for sunlight. What happens when they stretch themselves out, they're going to be thinning out. So the volado section of the plant does not have a lot of flavor. However, it is used in the filler in order to give this cigar that consistent burn. As you can see, the cigar is staying lit. What allows that to happen is the seco part of the plant.

Blending

Okay. So now we're going to talk about blending the cigar. This is where the magic happens. The hand of the master blender comes in and starts playing with all sorts of beautiful leaves. Now most cigars usually have three different types of ligero. It's going to have the seco for flavoring, and it's going to have obviously the volado for that consistent burn. Now ligeros can span anywhere from Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, all way down to Peru. You have the Criollo, you have Corojo's, you Piloto Cubano. So there you see where the experiences come in to know what to blend for that very good flavor.

Every single cigar is not going to be the same because there's different sizes. You have the Robustos, you have the Toros, you have the 6 x 60s. Learning and knowing how to shift within the filler to accommodate for every single size takes a lot of experience. You have different types of wrappers. What's going to compliment in Connecticut and what's going to compliment in San Andres definitely takes the hand of a master blender.

Rolling

So now we're going to talk about rolling the cigars, and there's three different ways of doing this. One of the most common ways is bunching the leaves together in a book. You stack them against each other, and then you fold them, and then you place them into the mold.

All right. So this is the second way of rolling a cigar, which is called the entubado. This is where you take each separate leaf and roll it into a scroll. Then you take all these scrolls together, you bunch them up, and then you bound them and you place them in the mold.

Okay. So the third way a cigar is rolled is when the leaves are folded together like a fan, and this is going to be called the accordion style. Then you bunch and bind them together and place them in a mold. Once those molds are finished, you will then stack them into a press like this. Then with this lever, you're just going to turn it, and you're going to press them against each other for about two or three days until you get the desired shape that you are looking for.

Come Join Us

So this concludes this week's video. Please tune in for next week for part three. Other than that, my name is Gerard. Follow us on Instagram. Like us on Facebook. And remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel.