Bespoke cigarettes

[storeynicholas]

First, don't forget to look at the This is a Pipe-Smoking Zone thread.
Some Brief Notes on Tobacco
Early Tobacco and Europeans
The Mayans and Aztecs smoked tobacco 1000s of years ago and all are familiar with the Peace Pipe of the North American Indians. Columbus found people in the Americas smoking it in his voyage of 1492 and Sir Walter Raleigh is credited with introducing it (and potatoes) to Europe in the late 15th C.

[/i]Main types
Virginia - fire-cured and light;
Burley (including Perique) - air-cured, darker and stronger;
Oriental - grown in the Balkans, Turkey and the Middle-East - sun-cured found in Turkish-style cigarettes and includes Latakia a strong dark fire-cured tobacco originally from Syria and which needs to be mixed to be palatable. A mixture is just a mixture of different tobaccos; strictly, a blend is a mixture that has been subjected to steam- pressure treatment

Curing methods
The main curing methods are:
air-curing;
sun-curing;
flue-curing (heat introduced through flues);
fire-curing.

Early reception
Even it's early reception was mixed: King James I hated it; White's Club has never permitted it and Charles Lamb famously declared that he had 'quit tobacco'. Observations ranged from feast for the fiend to cornucopia of all earthly pleasure[

Cigarettes
Possibly the earliest smokes from 3,000 years ago - often in wrappers of corn and palm leaves. Modern cigarette tobacco is fine cut shag, in mixtures between any of: Burley, Virginia (sun-cured and fire-cured) and Oriental - a mixture of all three, resulting in classic American blends such as Lucky Strike (one of my favourites). Cigarettes were factory-made from the mid 19th C. Rolling tobacco is also fine cut shag but, maybe, has fewer additives (ranging from wood to salt petre (a constituent of gunpowder) - to make it burn evenly). Brazilian cigarette packets state that there are 700 harmful constituents in manufactured cigarette tobacco. Does one inhale Oriental tobacco? - yes, but it permeates one's soul; bringing calm in any crisis and wooing the nostrils of the gods. Turkish and other Oriental cigarettes often came in distinctive oval tubes but Sullivan & Powell's Oriental cigarettes came in big cylinders, tightly packed, swathed in thick tissue paper in boxes of 25 or 100. There ar again some Turkish cigarettes obtainable in the EU - but they have lessened strength and flavour.

Pipe tobacco
Here there are basically, Aromatics (also called Cavendish - such as Radford's Wild Honey) which may derive in part from Middle Eastern shisha, smoked in hubbly-bubblies and Striaight blends. These all come as crimp cut (short and curled); curly-cut (dark and light corded together) and navy cut (thin slabs of pressed dark tobacco which has to be crumbled and rolled - a pleasure in itself). other terms for preparation and presentation include: roughcut; ribbon; flake and twist (the last is usually for chewing).

.Cigars
See also the thread on Havanas
The best are made of dark, air-cured tobaccos such as Manila and Besuki and subject to at least 2 fermentations of the sugars - Cohibas are thrice fermented. There is filler tobacco and binder and wrapper too - obviously choice unblemished leaves are used to finish the product. The names of great cigars (especially Cuban) are Spanish because the Spanish started the cultivation of cigar tobacco in modern times. The great Cuban and Latin-American cigars (especially now notably those from Nicaragua and Honduras) are long-filler wet cigars and need to be kept in a humidor. European (eg Dutch) cigars are short-filler and dry. The parejo is a straight-sided cigar and a shaped cigar (classic torpedo types) are figurados.

I started a spectacularly unsuccessful snuff thread to which I shall add an otherwise unpublished piece, in the hope of currying some interest there!!

Anyway, I hope, Guille, that the above (superficially) answers some of your questions.
NJS [/b]

[Guille]

NJS, thank you very much for your answers, they have answered my questions, although I might have some more doubts.

Thanks for the history lesson and for the information on cultivation, production and consumption. I did read a long description of how cigars are made - its a process with so many stages. I'd like to visit cuba one day - hopefully not too far - when the commies are gone. I really want to see the plantations, the processes, the factories...

I've actually had my turn on smoking shisha, I liked the experience although I wouldn't keep it as a frequent use, I might do it rarely on some other occasions (a plus of shishas is that you can have a nice taste of good alcohol through them as well as smoking tobacco (or whatever else you're willing to smoke, but I only tried tobacco).

I don't resolve one question: given the differences between rolling tobacco and pipe tobacco, they are not exchanged rightly, I mean, is JRLT right?

By the way, they only European cigars I've tried were from the Toscana this summer, I really liked them, they were quite more intense and you could feel the deepness of the European forest and climate in contrast to the freshness and lightness of the tropical carribean, but I liked them (they were also a more patient smoke).

One other question I have is about 'filtered cigars'. I came upon them on the internet, and I don't know anything. Are they 'cigars' in that they are pure tobacco, but they are wrapped in paper or something, no? Plus, they are smoked inhaled? I ask about inhaling because I am not willing to do so due to my sportive nature, I quite need my lungs healthy. But I would be willing to smoke oriental cigars if they can be smoked uninhaled (cigar-style I mean), can they (even if you are not recieving the aforementioned pleasure in your lungs), or does it not work? The same with the filtered cigars, they have to be inhaled right?



PS: An acquianted gave me the news that a restaurant in Valladolid here in Spain is willing to sell the cigar boxes they have kept for decades of cuban Davidoffs nº1 and 2, at quite a low price considering their possible prices at auctions.

[storeynicholas]

Dear Guille,
Tobacco production is a big process and mine is a mere sketch. I am sure that Cuba is a delightful country although I have not been. I think that most people use rolling tobacco only for cigarettes because pipe tobacco is often too bulky and strong - I did once have a complete pipe of pure Latakia and I don't recommend it on its own! I don't recommend inhaling pipes or cigars as it is stronger that cigarette tobacco - and I am sure that you have applied the hankerchief test? In any event the membranes of the nose and mouth readily absorb nicotine from smoke or smokeless sources such as snuff or Scandinavian snus. I don't know about filtered cigars maybe they are cigarillos (or is that just small cigar like a cheroot). Sounds good news about the Daviidoff boxes.
NJS

[Guille]

I know about absorbtion of nicotine, that's not my concern with lungs, it's the deterioration of my lung's functioning at high activity, in which I engage nearly daily playing sports (tennis, football, etc). I know smoking (or consuming tobacco in any form, I must say I didn't know that snuff existed until I read your thread on it today) tobacco is bad for health in whatever the form, but it's also good for health. Whatever gives you life also takes life off you, it's the basic principle of existence, but I shouldn't be telling you, you know better. I'm going to try starting smoking pipes and see how it goes, and maybe also try rolling cigarrettes who knows. The filtered cigars I talk about are not cigarrillos, I've smoked occasionally cigarrillos of pure tobacco (because cigarrillo really means cigarrette, but cigarrillo de puro means pure tobacco cigarette) from Montecristo, those I like, and don't inhale (they're just cigars in really small size). But the filtered cigars seem to be some sort of pure tobacco cigar in small size (like cigarrillos) but with filters, so I didn't know if they actually are only tobacco or also contain chemicals (which are another thing I try to avoid when smoking).

Well thank you very much once again for your response. I'm just finishing a Ramon Allones robust right now.

I recall now a comic scene the other day at the tobacconist's, where a man got in and bought a pack of Montecristo cigarrillos and as he saw the Spanish law's enforced warnings on the pack, which read all sorts of warnings on health issues related to tobacco, which said "Smoking produces impotence and 'envejeze' (oldens, as in makes older) the skin" and asked the tobacconist "No, don't give me the one of impotence, give me the blood constrains or something, I prefer to get that". Quite a funny young man, I think he's called Guillermo and is a member of the best style/elegance forum on the web...

PS: If you're like me and you like to read quotes about cigars and cigar smoking, go to this page, it contains a long list of marvellous quotes: http://www.cigarsmag.com/Cigar_quotes.htm

[storeynicholas]

Thank you, Guille, for your information back - and I shall visit the quotes' page. On life-enhancement and so on - some people often forget that life is fleeting; whether it is prolonged to the nth degree, by the most careful living - or not. A coroner once told my father that some of the most shocking internal staining he had seen came from big tea drinkers!
NJS