The body scale gives you three words. Mild, medium, full. Mild to medium cigars are the ones it has no word for.
It works, and I use it on every review on this site. But it is coarse at one particular join, and that join is between the first two. They are not quite mild and not quite medium, and there are far more of them than a three word scale can show.
One extra step, not a new scale. This page is about that step: what it describes, what it does not, and what it feels like in practice.
What this page means by mild to medium
Body. The weight of the smoke. How dense and substantial it feels in the mouth, the way whole milk differs from skimmed.
That is worth stating plainly, because the same three words get used elsewhere for nicotine, and the two have nothing to do with each other. A mild bodied cigar can carry real nicotine. A full bodied one can be gentle on you.
On this site, mild to medium always means body. Nothing else on this page is about nicotine.
And body is not flavour either. Lower body does not mean fewer notes. It means less weight sitting on top of them, which is why cream, cedar, nuts and light sweetness read so clearly in this part of the scale. A mild cigar with no flavour is just a badly made cigar.
What mild to medium cigars feel like in practice
A mild to medium cigar gives you enough smoke to notice it without filling the room in your mouth.
In practice that means a few specific things.
It carries flavour without weight. Cream, cedar, nuts, light sweetness and bread notes come through clearly, because there is nothing heavy sitting on top of them.
It does not build the way a fuller cigar does. A full bodied cigar tends to get heavier as you work down it. Mild to medium usually stays close to where it started, with movement in the flavour rather than in the weight.
It is harder to ruin. Smoke a full bodied cigar too fast and it turns harsh and bitter quickly. Mild to medium tolerates a poor pace better. It is not immune, and if yours has gone bitter the cause is probably one of the eight on this list, but it is more forgiving.
It works when you are doing something else. That is not a backhanded compliment. A cigar that demands your whole attention is wrong for a round of golf or a long conversation, and a cigar that demands nothing is boring. This category is the one that sits in between.
Why the category exists at all
Two reasons, and the second one matters more.
Because three words will not hold the range, and my own notes prove it. Going back through the archive, the body ratings I have actually written include mild bordering on medium, medium bordering on mild, and medium almost full. Nine of the cigars below sit in half steps, not on the three marks. I did not decide to grade that way. I wrote down what the cigars were, and that is what came out.
And it is where most people actually end up. A lot of smokers start on mild because it is what gets recommended, find it pleasant but thin after a while, try something full bodied, and find that too much to handle on a weeknight. Mild to medium is where they land and stay.
That is not a compromise. It is the widest part of the market because it is the widest part of the taste.
Where the boundaries are
The lines are soft. No two producers draw them identically. But here is roughly how it works, with the body ratings as I recorded them.
One note on how I write them. The order is not loose. Mild bordering on medium means a mild cigar with a little more weight than most. Medium bordering on mild means a medium cigar sitting at its lighter end. First word is where the cigar is, second is where it leans, and the second of those two is the heavier smoke.
Properly mild
Joya de Nicaragua Cabinetta Robusto. Hay, grass, nuttiness, woodiness. Vanilla and sweet licorice underneath. Sixty five minutes, still mild.
Sixty five minutes. Worth sitting with, because it tells you length and body have nothing to do with each other.
PDR AFR-75 Cosecha Especial Shade Grown Robusto. Seventy minutes. Green grapes and fruit salad, pistachio, honeydew and pear.
Mild does not mean quiet.
Mild to medium, the category itself
Six from the archive, and the spread is the whole point.
Santa Damiana Short Robusto. Forty five minutes, the shortest here. Hay, fruitiness, nuttiness with sweet almonds. White pepper on the retrohale.
Flor de Copan Short Robusto. Also forty five, and a shade higher at medium bordering on mild. Hay, grass, nuttiness, woodiness, salty licorice underneath.
AJ Fernandez San Lotano Requiem Connecticut. Medium bordering on mild, fifty five minutes. About as close to the centre of this category as anything gets.
Matilde Serena Robusto. Fifty five to sixty, and it moves more than any of them. Hay, grass and a nut mix to open. Then cedar, cashew, ground coffee, honey and brown sugar, faint figs, hickory. Then it retreats to wood, nuts, leather and coffee.
Don Kiki Green Label Toro. Seventy five minutes of spruce needle, lime citrus and fresh herbs.
Bright and herbal, not creamy. Unusual in this category, and worth knowing if cream and cedar are not what you are after.
Aroma de Nicaragua Connecticut Toro. About a hundred minutes, with an almost dessert like character under the woody notes.
Clearly medium
Nub Sungrown and Leonel Barber Pole Toro. Both over the line. More weight, more presence.
What that spread tells you
Read the smoke times in the middle group again. Forty five. Forty five. Fifty five. Sixty. Seventy five. A hundred.
And the longest one I have recorded is not even on that list. The Don Kiki Gold Label El Gordo builds from mild to medium over 150 minutes. Lemon, green grape and chamomile to open. A cola candy note at the nub.
Two and a half hours.
So this category is not shorthand for a quick, easy cigar. Body and duration are separate measurements, and the archive settles it.
The wrapper shortcut
If you want to find this category on a shelf rather than in a review, the wrapper is the closest thing to a shortcut.
Connecticut shade is the wrapper most closely associated with the mild and mild to medium range. Pale, thin, and it adds cream and cedar rather than weight. Two of the cigars above wear one, and it is no accident. I set out what every wrapper name means separately, and the Connecticut cigars worth buying if you want to go deeper on that one.
But treat it as a hint and not a rule, for one reason that matters: the wrapper is a minority of the tobacco in the cigar. The filler is where most of the body comes from. A Connecticut wrapper over a Nicaraguan ligero filler is not a mild cigar, and plenty of brands build exactly that.
The Don Kiki Green Label makes the same point from the other direction. Spruce needle, lime citrus and fresh herbs is not the cream and cedar you would predict from the category, and no wrapper would have told you that.
So the wrapper narrows your search. The blend decides the answer.
How to use the category when buying
If mild has started to bore you, this is the next step, not full bodied. The jump straight from mild to full is how people conclude they do not like cigars.
Check the smoke time separately from the body. They are unrelated, and the Aroma above proves it at 100 minutes. If you have an hour, a long mild to medium cigar is the wrong buy no matter how gentle it is.
And if the review does not say, the format will not tell you. Body is a blending decision. A robusto and a churchill from the same blend are the same body, and thickness is girth rather than power.
For the two neighbouring categories I keep separate lists: mild bodied cigars worth trying and medium bodied cigars worth trying. If you want all three levels side by side, here is the comparison.
Frequently asked
What does mild to medium mean on a cigar?
It describes the body, meaning the weight and density of the smoke. A mild to medium cigar gives you noticeably more presence than a mild one without the fullness of a medium. It says nothing about nicotine strength or about how long the cigar lasts.
Is mild to medium the same as medium to mild?
No, and in my reviews the order is deliberate. The first word is where the cigar sits, the second is the direction it leans. Mild bordering on medium is a mild cigar carrying a little more weight than most mild cigars. Medium bordering on mild is a medium cigar sitting at its lighter end. The second of those is the heavier cigar. Read the first word first.
Is a mild to medium cigar strong?
Not usually, but the two are separate measurements. Body is the weight of the smoke, strength is nicotine, and they move independently. A mild bodied cigar can still have real nicotine behind it.
Are mild to medium cigars good for beginners?
Often, yes, and the categories overlap. But it is not a beginner category. It is where a large share of experienced smokers settle once they have tried everything else.
What wrapper should I look for?
Connecticut shade is the closest thing to a shortcut, because it adds cream and cedar rather than weight. It is only a hint, though. The filler is most of the tobacco in the cigar and most of the body comes from there.
Can a mild to medium cigar be flavourful?
That is the point of the category. Lower body means less weight sitting on top of the flavour, which is why cream, cedar, nuts and light sweetness read so clearly in these cigars. Mild is not a synonym for bland.
Why is mild to medium not on the box?
Packaging gets one word where the cigar needs one and a half. And a box rarely tells you whether its word means body or nicotine, which is the more useful thing to check.
Who is writing this
I am Peter Stefanic, founder and editor of VDG Cigars, and a Certified Cigar Sommelier through the International Association of Cigar Sommeliers.
I have run this publication on my own for over three years and reviewed more than 240 cigars, every one smoked and recorded the same way: flavour by third, body, retrohale, aftertaste and the smoke time in minutes. I have also published more than 25 interviews with brand owners, blenders and founders, most of them exclusive to this site.
Two things about the archive are worth knowing. The scores are not all good — there are cigars in here rated in the sixties, because an archive where everything scores well is a catalogue rather than a review archive. And every number comes with the reasoning: what the cigar tasted of, how heavy it was, how long it ran. That is the part you can check against your own palate.
No brand owns this site and no brand sees a review before it goes up.
