 Views from a Smoke-Filled Room
by Rich Perelman
Editor-in-Chief
Los Angeles, October 6 – On or off?
Is this the unanswerable question? The controversy that will never die?
Probably.
Whether or not to remove the band from a cigar before lighting, after lighting or at the end varies according to where you are and how you feel about the cigar you are smoking:
• In Europe and Great Britain, the custom has long been to remove the band from your cigar prior to lighting. The English, especially, have felt that keeping the band on is bad form as it advertises the brand you are smoking.
• In the U.S., most smokers keep the band on, often to let others know what you are smoking. If you’re in Las Vegas and buying a Fuente Fuente Opus X for $50 and up for a single cigar, don’t you want people to know you’re wildly overpaying for this exclusive but exceptional smoke?
There are also practical reasons that many Americans cite for keeping bands on, at least at the start. Although bands are carefully attached with a spot of glue applied to one end of a band, it’s not unusual to have a tiny amount of glue spill over and end up attaching the band to the cigar’s wrapper. Ripping off a band prior to lighting can cause a wrapper tear, which is not only ugly, but can cause a wrapper to begin unraveling.
One way around this for many smokers is to leave the band on while lighting, but rotate it gently after the first couple of puffs to ensure that it is separated from the wrapper and then remove it. This must be done delicately, again not to damage the wrapper. I always try to remove bands by lifting the top end of the band at the glue point very slowly with a fingernail and then pulling on it carefully. Many bands will separate easily and come off in one piece while others will have been glued too heavily to allow anything other than tearing it to pieces.
Bands are also getting bigger and more colorful today, which makes them more fun to look at and collect, but also take more glue to attach. For example, the band on the new Altadis-produced Juan Lopez brand is vibrant and impressive and recalls one reason reported to have caused bands to be produced in the first place. The story goes that 18th Century smokers – especially women – wore white gloves to dinner and holding a cigar with a sumptuous but oily wrapper caused stains. So, bands were introduced to prevent stains.
If true, all bands would probably be white. But the generally-accepted story behind the development of bands and their remarkable artwork is that manufacturers wanted to be able to differentiate their brands from imitators. After all, outside of a box, how could you tell if a cigar was from a particular maker? This troubled Gustave Bock, whose Bock y Cia. cigars were immensely popular (and profitable) in the mid-19th Century. In 1850, he was reportedly the first to attach bands to his cigars as a way to identify them as genuine against all others.
Today, virtually all cigars have bands and even the Cubans, who had held out on placing bands on some shapes of specific brands – the Hoyo de Monterrey Epicure series, the Juan Lopez Seleccion No. 1 and No. 2 and the H. Upmann Magnum 46, for example – have now adopted a policy that all brands and all shapes will be banded.
Although I have generally preferred to keep bands on my cigars while smoking, I have lately begun to remove them after lighting for an entirely different reason.
Like many Americans who played baseball as kids, I was used to batting with the trademark label facing me. With cigars, I applied – and have noticed most others do so as well – the same discipline and not only keep the band on, but smoke the cigar with the label facing up where I can see it. This can lead to other problems.
One way to help ensure an even burn on your cigar is to rotate it during smoking. Take a puff and then turn the cigar a little for the next puff. This can seem odd, to be smoking a cigar while looking at the side or back of a band. Silly? Maybe, but true.
Removing the band after lighting removes this irritation for the smoker and frees one’s mind from the trap of smoking the cigar “face up” all of the time. Without a band to bother you, you will more easily – even automatically – rotate the cigar as you smoke it and help maintain an even burn, which will in turn help ensure that you benefit from the full flavor of the cigar as you smoke it.
It’s a matter of personal preference, for sure, but the benefits to “turn and burn” cannot be denied. I stand by my band as a matter of identification, but am now glad to remove it after lighting to make sure I enjoy everything that each cigar can give me in terms of flavor and aroma.
And I now have an impressive band collection!
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