#CubanCigars #SoExpensive #BusinessInsider
Why Cuban Cigars Are So Expensive | #Tobacco
Cuban cigars are known as the world's most opulent tobacco product. A box of cuban Habanos can cost thousands of dollars. Here is why!
Stop Smoking for Better Health
Firstly, before we get into it, I do not endorse smoking, since inhaling smoke toxic & has negative health consequences that the Surgeon General of the United States warns about with clear high contrast warning labels on tobacco product packaging. I do not smoke, do not believe in smoking, & do not condone or endorse others to smoke! I never want to encourage anyone to smoke. I have written extensively about coal power emissions, particles, soot, engine tailpipe emission & other air pollutants like bio mass smoke or diesel exhaust smoke.
SMOKE IS UNHEALTHY. This is widely known and thus smoking popularity has significantly declined in the USA and in many other well developed countries. Many states have banned public smoking in restaurants & other public places. Typically there is a smoking tent or special area at least 25 feet away from the building where smokers can go to smoke cigarettes, cigars, pipes or whatever tobacco product they prefer.
Analysis & Commentary
This blog post is an economic analysis & social examination related to the History of Tobacco, tobacco cultivation & the conversion of specially processed tobacco leaves into high value added products like cigarettes, cigars, pipe tobacco, smokeless tobacco, nicotine vape juice, heat-not-burn tobacco products & similar flavored tobacco smoked out of hookahs or water pipes heated by burning hot coal briquette, or by a burning piece of cedar wood or with a butane lighter flame! There are many ways to start a fire, light a cigarette or ignite a cigar, butane fueled jet lights with two or more flame jets are common to use for this purpose!
Cuban Cigars
Every hand-rolled Cuban cigar goes through around 500 manual processing steps from seed to tobacco plant leaves, to the fermentation & drying of the leaves & final high quality hand made production of a superior quality cigar.
New World Cigars
Over the last 3 decades cigars made outside of Cuba, like cigars made in the Caribbean and Central America that have become similar in quality. Some experts of cigars claim that smokers in America are buying fake counterfeit Cuban Cigars 95% of the time. This might make you wonder why cuban cigars are so desired by cigar aficionados? You might also wonder why a real Cuban Cigar so much more expensive that cigars of comparable quality made in other countries!
200 Years of Cigar History
Two centuries of consistent methodologies applied to make cigars in Cuba gives a real cuban cigar heritage & distinction. It takes over a year of tobacco farming cultivation, harvesting, hanging tobacco leaves in drying houses known as secaderos, preceding a slow fermentation process that remove a lot ammonia from the tobacco leaves, while also enhancing the flavor, aroma & burning characteristics. Inspections of every tobacco leaf preformed to sort them by type, appearance & quality. An expert highly skilled cigar roller craftsman known as a torcedor are greatly respected in Cuban society.
Heart of Cuban Habano Making
In Pinar Del Rio, the westernmost province of Cuba, 70% of premium cigar tobacco cultivated by state-run monopolies in the heartland of Cuban cigar production. The soil, climate, weather, topography, landscape, ecosystems, and other terroir attributes influence the fundamental qualities of Cuban tobacco.
Incumbent Cigar Makers
New World cigars from the Dominican Republic & Nicaragua are now more desirable, where many cigar consumers are looking for new world cigars! With excellent presentation inside high quality wood boxes with excellent labels & attention to detail, these new world cigars are offering the Cuban cigar experience with better quality than those from Havana because of newer high quality control methods applied at these up & coming tobacco companies. A box of 25 cuban cigars might contain 3 duds, while a similar box of 25 New World Cigars are usually all perfect!
Cigar Smokers
Some tobacco experts still prefer the authentic Cuban Cigar! They absolutely adore Havana cigars. "There is no better, there is only different" says Orchant, a tobacco & cigar expert, who continues "Its just personal preference, which cigar you like more" / some people prefer lighter smokes that are more fruity with essential oils & other terpenes flavor compounds, that they retrohale through their mouth & out their nose.
Cigar Prices
The larger the cigar the more expensive. There are many different cigar shapes & sizes. Aging a cigar in wood boxes, whisky barrels, bourbon barrels, scotch barrels, in cedar wood cabinets, over time the flavor depth intensifies, developing more complex aroma. The room smoke the smell of the cigar to other people nearby who are not smoking it, for example, is strongly influenced by how the cigar was aged, at what humidity & temperatures & in what case material, such that woods impart some of their flavors & aroma to the low moisture content tobacco leaves in the cigar.
Cuban Embargo
Since 1962 it's been illegal for Cuba to export real Cuban Habano cigars to America, increasing the American desire for an authentic Cuban Cigar. Even president John F. Kennedy ordered his press secretary to order 1000 cuban cigars right before the embargo was enacted. This created grey & black markets for cuban cigars, where counterfeits & fakes are often trafficked. Tobacco is the most trafficked legal drug in the world. Unscrupulous vendors of fakes & counterfeits pushing these New World cigars with fake labeling & fake boxes & fake wrapping, all to trick the consumer into thinking they are paying extra for & getting the real deal, a real Cuban Habano.
Cigars in America
USA the top cigar consuming market worldwide, the cigar industry expanding to $21 billions by 2025! Can Cuba deliver on increasing demand for authentic cigars? With agriculture & shipping problems, COVID19 closure & supply chain issues, we are more likely to see coffee, tobacco, sugar, tea, oil & other traded commodities experience price volatility.
Luxury Cigars a Status Symbol
Noting that taste & enjoyment are subjective human experiences, and the psychology of a status symbol like the Cuban Cigar influences the cigar consumers experiences with such products, just the way a Oyster Perpetual from Rolex about much more than just wear a wrist watch to be able to know what time it is "at-a-glance", luxury watches, luxury homes, luxury cars, luxury clothes, those have more to do with the wealthy consumers ideologies, beliefs & persona, and not as much about the actual luxury products! In recent years all premium cigars have uniform pricing!
Don't be a Chooch "ch-eew-ch"
Recycle your ID10T form at once! You have to cut the cap of the cigar to get started, there are several methods, the punch tool the best for newbs. After cutting, do a dry cold pull on the cigar to see if it has good airflow. If the cigar cannot breathe when cold, it will not smoke or burn properly either; that means you have a dud & may consider returning it. Next, you want to light the entire foot of the cigar completely to get a good hot red coal happening. If you blow at the burning foot, it should glow even red all across the foot. Heat from that cherry red combustion drives off the volatiles in the aged tobacco that give flavor, aroma & nicotine to the users mouth, throat & nose.
Puff Not Inhale
Never inhale the cigar smoke into your lungs! You puff a cigar, pulling the smoke into your mouth, holding it there for a few seconds, then opening your mouth & letting the smoke waft back out into a beautiful grayish moving cloud of smoke threads that look cool as they disperse & fade away into second hand smoke as fine particle quantum movement in gaseous diffusion. Make sure you smoke the cigar outside or a in a well ventilated area, since too much cigar smoke can irritate your eyes & annoy other people nearby! No one wants to be hot-boxed with cigar smoking, since that would not be an enjoyable experience!
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