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UP UP AND AWAY!

Imports of premium cigars grew at 15% for July

Los Angeles, September 24 – Nobody knows exactly why the Cigar Boom happened. And nobody has a good explanation why imports of premium cigars into the U.S. are going through the roof once again. Maybe we should just enjoy it.

The Cigar Association of America has released import figures for July and imports of premium cigars show an increase, year-over-year, of 14.53% against July of 2003 and for the year to date, an increase of 14.93% to 159.9 million sticks this year against 139.1 million a year ago.

If we project this rate of increase for the entire year, imports of premium cigars would total 315.27 million, a figure which would be exceeded only by the peak boom years of 1997 (417.78 million) and 1998 (334.58 million). The projected figure of 315.27 million would be larger than any import total at least back to the 1970s, except for those two boom years. Amazing.

Imports have not only increased every year since 2000, but monthly import levels have increased for eight straight months and nine of the last 10. With so much aged tobacco available and prices holding at a reasonable level, there’s never been a better time to enjoy world-class cigars. Nice that more folks are joining in.

The Tricolor:
Mike’s Cigars offers a weekly e-mail special which can contain some remarkable deals. This week’s edition focuses on three new brands from the innovative Felipe Gregorio team.

The Nicaraguan-made Dos Montes and Dominican-made Memoria de Cuba cigars are good and good values. But the showstopper is what Mike’s calls the “Tricolor,” a special cigar made by Felipe Gregorio with a triple wrapper!

As close to a visual candy cane as any cigar ever made, it takes the original “barber pole” concept introduced in 1996, as the Hugo Cassar Diamond Dominican Mystique, by Steve Hersch, one step further. Hersch was then part of Cassar’s team at Kretek International, but has now combined his mad scientist routine with the marvelous manufacturing efforts of Philip Wynne’s Felipe Gregorio team and created the Tres Capas (pictured above). A special edition of this cigar is now offered by Mike’s under their 898 Collection label.

Made at the Tabacalera Real in Tamboril, the cigar offers a medium-bodied, Dominican-grown binder and filler, but has three wrappers intertwined: Nicaraguan-grown candela (green), Connecticut-grown claro (tan) and Indonesian-grown maduro (dark brown). As the Mike’s offer puts it, “It looks like a G.I. fatigue uniform.”

A box of 10 is just $40.00, but Mike’s is offering a special to its e-mail list subscribers until September 28, at $34.95. A fabulous conversation starter, or a stirring gift, it’s a unique cigar that is truly original.

Class, now class . . . pay attention!
About.com is a giant portal site which offers dozens of specialty sub-sites dealing with various topics. Cigars is covered as part of the “Hobbies and Games” section under the direction of About.com’s “guide,” Jeff Aiken.

The cigar-guide site is now organized as a kind of blog, with short posts on topics of interest. Aiken’s September 18 response to a reader’s question caught my attention.

The reader asked, referring to the machine-made “Black and Mild” pipe-tobacco line, whether to smoke them like a cigar or a cigarette, moreover, “if you smoke a cigarette like a cigar, is there a greater chance of your getting oral and throat cancer.”

Aiken’s response surprised me: “Smoke them as you wish. There’s no right way to smoke a cigar. There is no safer way to smoke. It’s all a personal choice. The best choice if you’re worried is not to smoke. But in the end, it’s what you choose.”

Oh boy.

Aiken must not have read his own site’s feature on “How to Smoke a Cigar” which notes, “Do not inhale any smoke and never swallow the residue of any tobacco product; it will eventually make you ill.”

Moreover, a careful study of the medical literature concerning cigars, especially the National Cancer Institute’s monograph on cigars, published in 1998, suggest some interesting things about cigars and disease based on the way one smokes. In short:

• Never chew on a lit or unlit cigar; the result of chewed cigars is the same as if you use smokeless tobacco, which has a much higher level of cancers reported in the mouth and throat than for cigar smokers.

• Keep your cigar away from your mouth unless you are actively puffing on it. For a 30-minute smoke, you may actually be puffing on a cigar for less than five minutes. That’s important.

• Moreover, hold your cigar so that the smoke is not inhaled through the nostrils (it’s usually pretty acrid anyway). One advantage of cigars is that the smoke is usually introduced to the body only through the mouth cavity and not significantly through other points of entry such as the nose. Keep it that way.

• Smoke less than five cigars a day. Sound easy? Sure, but note that the NCI’s monograph shows that the rate of death from all causes for smokers of 1-2 cigars a day is a grand 2% more (within the margin of error) than for non-smokers. For smokers of 3-4 cigars a day, it’s 8%.

It’s easy advice to follow and cigar lovers can reduce their exposure to disease by smoking the right way. It’s not as sure as abstention, but it sure beats freestyling.
~ Rich Perelman

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