Luca wrote:Allow me to pose a very ignorant question.
Should the aging take place inside a humidor or outside?
No question is ignorant, Luca. It should happen inside a humidor, in the box in your wine cellar or in the box in the humidor.
When you live in a tropical climate, such as Cuba itself, or Thailand, you might not need a humidor for cigar storage. On the other hand, the humidor will provide stable humidity even in those climates - which would help ageing.
If a cigar is kept outside a humidor in a dry climate, you can in most cases sort of save it by putting it back to the humidor for a couple of weeks. In the earlier days of the 20th century, it was common practice to keep the big stock in the wine cellar at stable conditions (this is important), and taken to a small humidor at least 2 months before smoking. Cigars will suffer when drying out completely or when stored in unstable conditions.
Luca wrote:What is the minimum amount of aging that is likely to make a difference?
In my experience, this largely depends on the cigar. That experience is based on Cuban cigars only, knowing that tobacco quality varies from year to year, and only really
grand cigars deserve ageing. The quality will not differ as much as European red wines, but there are distinctive differences the
connaisseur will spot. You can talk of ageing from 3 years after purchasing, but it is getting interesting after 5 years. Not all cigars mature at the same speed, and you should be particularly attentive during European summer months (August in particular) when the cigars are having "fever" (quoting Zino Davidoff). A grand cigar well stored will stay in shape for many many years and likely survive most of us.
May be there is another limitation to what I'm saying. I smoke strictly cigars type colorado-maduro or maduro, because I find the
claro and
doble claro types less interesting. I was told by experienced men of the trade that claro and doble claro types should be smoked immediately or after 12 months latest. Unfortunately, most of the savvy
connaisseurs in the trade are dead or have closed their shops - these were typical discussion topics I used to have with experienced cigar sales people. Today, I would suggest you figure it out, by keeping good stock in good conditions over time.
I hope this helps a little.
cheers, david
I do have the recent Upmann Noella Jar I picked up in Montecarlo waiting for Its time to Shine. A well aged Habano is hard to top.
