Blog & Cigar News | Mardo Cigars

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Mondays with Mardo's. I'm Gerard, and today we're going to talk about does aging your cigars truly improve the flavor of it? Well, today we're going to get to know.

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So let's get down to business, the age old question, "Does aging cigars improve the taste and the flavor of your cigars?" Well, that's a very good question.

In front of me, I have a little bit of an example, something from the Dominican Republic, a Jake Wyatt Lucid Interval. Now, this is a Candela cigar. The reason why I mentioned it, this manufacturer does stamp the bottom of their boxes with a date of December 2019, happens to be the date of this box. Now, if I were to buy one or two boxes, at least I have a understanding of when this was packaged.

Now, let's talk about how cigars are made. We know that there's three parts of cigars. We have the filler, the binder, and the outside wrapper. When a manufacturer makes a cigar, first off, when they buy their tobacco, they could be buying it from the wholesaler or they could be buying futures from the farmer. And those cigars, or excuse me, those tobaccos can have age themselves already. Now, whenever a manufacturer buys it, they can go ahead and cure them and age them with their own proprietary techniques. And what they can use is basically cognac barrels. They can use aging rooms. And they have different ways of doing things. So this is all their secrets.

So having aged tobacco and a aged cigar is completely different. And when you make a cigar and it has aged tobacco, it does not mean that these tobaccos have married each other yet. So when we bunch a cigar with a binder, we put into a press and then we finish it with a beautiful wrapper. Now, we have an entire cigar. This does need to sit in an aging room, and a minimum of three weeks all the way up to about 40 days, to let them marry, let the flavors get to be introduced to each other, and then therefore also the ammonia to be alleviated.

Now, recently, I smoked a Viaje, one of their newest release called the Private Keep Chartreuse for this year. Very good cigar. I loved it. Has lots of flavor of orange peel, orange spice, a little bit of red chili pepper in there, and some honey sweetness on my tongue. The second, third of the smoke, I tasted some veggie flavors. It started burning really slow. It felt a little over humid. Obviously, it does need to be aged a little bit. I have a very good hunch and a feeling that, if I age the cigar for at least 30 days, it is going to be a change within the second third. Experience does come into play.

Another one, fundamentally, is very easy to keep track of is Cuban cigars. Cuban cigars have always had the factory stamp and the date of packaging stamp on the boxes. And this allows us to track what factory it comes from and what is the date of the cigar? We all know that Cuban cigars do have sometimes issues with draw and it being plugged.

Well, storing Cuban cigars is another factor. We want to keep it at a lower humidity, so therefore it dries out a little bit. And once it dries out, some of those knots fix themselves and you get a better draw.

Also, aging Cuban cigars do add some value depending on what brand it is that you have. So that's another factor that you want to dig into. This box right here is my father Don Pepin Garcia, Series JJ. Also, they do have the box date on the bottom. This one is June 2019.

So how can I simplify this? If you're looking into aging cigars, it does take a little bit of money. If you have a cigar that you want to definitely put your hands on because it's rare and it doesn't have a box date, or if it does, I would buy two or three boxes, one box for you to just smoke and play with it a little bit. You can smoke it right out of the box. Wait about 30 days for the remainder of the box. See if it changes. And the two other ones, one I would let sit for about a year and then up to two to three years and see if there's any change in it. And then the last one, if it's hard to find, I would definitely keep it as a collector.

Now, if it does not come with a box date, you can basically put your own piece of paper or write with a Sharpie right on the cellophane of what the date was when you bought the box.

So I hope this gives you a little bit of understanding of what aging does and how aging plays a big part in the flavor of the cigar. Other than that, I want to hear in the comments what is your way of aging cigars? And I will see you next week. My name is Gerard. Remember to follow us on Instagram, like us on Facebook, and tell your friends to subscribe to our YouTube channel. See you, guys.