Category: Cigar Education
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Should You Store Cigars With Cellophane On or Off?
Should you store cigars with the cellophane on or take it off? It is one of the most asked questions in the hobby, and the answers floating around the forums contradict each other constantly. Some swear by naked storage. Others never touch the wrapper. Most articles end with a shrug and the words “personal preference,”…
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Are Cuban Cigars Always Best? What Every Cigar Smoker Should Know
By Peter at VDG Cigars | Certified Cigar Sommelier Few questions in the premium cigar world carry as much weight — or as much mythology — as this one. Walk into any well-stocked lounge and bring it up. Within minutes, the conversation will divide the room between those who treat Cuban cigars as the permanent…
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Interview with Stefano of Compania de Tabacos and Escobar Cigars: The invisible world behind every premium cigar
The cigar in your humidor passed through more hands than you will ever see. Before it reached the shelf, someone imported it. Someone cleared customs on it. Someone negotiated with the producer, paid the duties, stored it correctly, navigated the regulations, set the pricing, and built a market for it in a country it had…
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Tony Barrios on What a Master Blender Actually Does: An Exclusive Interview with Stallone Cigars
By Peter | VDG Cigars | Certified Cigar Sommelier There are blenders, and then there are Master Blenders. The difference, as I discovered during my conversation with Tony Barrios, is not a matter of degree. It is a matter of a lifetime. Tony is the man behind Stallone Cigars, a brand he has carried in…
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How to Train Your Palate for Full-Bodied Cigars
The most common version goes like this: someone hands you a full-strength Nicaraguan before your palate is ready. The strength hits harder than expected. The flavors blur into a wall of intensity rather than separating into something readable. The experience is rough rather than rich, and a conclusion forms that full-bodied cigars simply aren’t enjoyable.…
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How to Train Your Cigar Palate Through Food: The Complete Method
By Peter | VDG Cigars | Certified Cigar Sommelier You’ve smoked dozens of cigars. Maybe hundreds. But when someone at the lounge talks about dried fig on the retrohale or a dark chocolate finish, you’re nodding along while honestly tasting something closer to warm smoke and a vague sense of satisfaction. Here’s the thing: the…
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How to Hold a Cigar Properly
Let’s put one idea to rest before anything else: there is no single correct way to hold a cigar properly. If someone tells you otherwise, they’re presenting personal preference as universal law. The grip that works perfectly on a Robusto may feel completely wrong on a Churchill. The way an experienced smoker holds his cigar…
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Smoking Cigars on the Golf Course: Rules, Etiquette and What to Know
By Peter | VDG Cigars | Certified Cigar Sommelier Yes, you can smoke a cigar on a golf course — and in most cases nobody will stop you or even look twice. Cigars and golf have gone together for well over a century, and the culture around it is well established. But there is a…
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The Robusto: Why It Became the World’s Most Popular Cigar Size
Walk into any cigar shop in the world and the robusto will be the size filling most of the humidor. Every major brand produces one. Most produce several. It is the format blenders reach for first when launching a new line and the cigar that sits in more humidors than any other vitola on earth.…
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Small Batch vs Large Production Cigars: Does Scale Affect Quality?
By Peter | VDG Cigars | Certified Cigar Sommelier I’ll tell you where I stand: I love small batch cigars. It comes down to two things — the tobacco and the craftsmanship. When a blender gets hold of leaf that has been aging for seven, eight, ten years and builds a cigar around it with…
