Cigars have been making up an essential part of human life and a great tradition for more than six centuries. Cigar smoking was discovered by Columbus colonists who arrived in the West Indies in 1492 and saw local people puffing on the aromatic plants rolled in tobacco leaves.

As the majority of the territory of modern South and Latin America belonged to Spain, and colonists brought the Spanish language to these territories that is why various cigar types often have Spanish names.

Today cigars are manufactured in a large variety of sizes, types, flavors, strength, shapes and country of origin.

Types of cigars:

Short filler cigars – usually these are machine made and comprise a wide range of cut tobacco strands, what helps the producer to get different flavors. Another advantage of this type of cigars is the ability to be stored for a very long period of time. If stored under normal handling conditions, the shelf life of this type of cigars is practically unlimited.

Long filler cigars – usually these are hand made cigars. They are longer and more expensive than short cigars. They are manufactured with whole tobacco leaves and come from countries with high level of humidity such as Cuba. Such cigars have to be stored in humidors under particular humidity and temperature in order to prevent their drying out.

Cigar aficionados are also aware of such terms as Corona and Panatela, parejo and figurado, which denote length, shape and width of each particular cigar.

It is as well very important to know that cigars consist of several parts. A traditional cigar comprises the following parts:

• The filler or the blend, is a certain tobacco blend, which may comprise more than 20 sorts of specially selected tobacco and is the major part of each cigar, as it provides the essential part of the flavor.
• The binder is used to bind the contents of every cigar and attach a particular shape to cigars. The binder is generally manufactured from tobacco leaf, frequently ground up and reconstituted in order to make up sheets resembling paper. It encircles the filler creating the share and width of the cigar.
• The wrapper is also manufactured of the tobacco leaf. It wraps up the binder and the filler and also significantly contributes to the flavor properties of each and every cigar.

The tobacco used in the manufacture of cigars is grown and processed in a special way, which differs from that used in cigarettes. The majority of tobacco blends contain dark air cured tobacco sorts, such as Manilla and Besuki.

In contrast to cigarettes, major part of cigars is made by hand. Producing cigars is a very difficult process which requires a lot of attention and skills. In addition, the tobacco leaves for hand made cigars are also picked and sorted by hand. After the process of curing the tobacco reaches manufacturing plants where it is processed either automatically or rolled manually.

By Steve Shepherd, Staff Writer. Copyright © 2010 Cigarette-Store.org. All rights reserved.