 Views from a Smoke-Filled Room
by Rich Perelman
Editor-in-Chief
Los Angeles, August 4 – Remember the Pepsi Challenge?
It was a nationwide effort by Pepsi-Cola in the 1970s to win converts from Coca-Cola by staging hundreds of side-by-side taste tests between the two cola giants. Naturally, the resulting blitz of commercials featured win after win for Pepsi, but seeing was believing.
Exactly the same for cigar cutters, as I took my own Pepsi Challenge last week, with my trusty old cutter and a new, elegant cutter from France’s Rafael Belaubre, the genius behind the Credo line of cigars and humidification devices.
It reinforced my own view of cutters, but there are almost as many different cutters as there are cigar brands. Which is your favorite?
V-cut? Scissors? Punch? Guillotine?
Double-blade? Single-blade?
For me, there has been only one choice for many years. But we’ll get to that in a moment. First, consider your goal in cutting.
Some smokers prefer to create only a small opening to concentrate the heat and possibly the flavor of the cigar. These folks are the primary users of the V-cutter, punch or even a piercer (rarely seen today). These kinds of cuts create a funnel through which the smoke is forced and have a definite impact on the smoking experience.
Being most interested in the taste of the cigar as the blender intended it, I’m partial to opening the cigar fully at the head to provide the greatest exposure for the tobacco to express itself once lit. So I’m a guillotine man.
One note: if you have a very, very sharp cigar scissors, it’s just as good as a guillotine cutter. Blades which are so sharp that they slice through the head of the cigar, rather than pinch it, will make an excellent cut and are highly prized. Do not be surprised to pay well more than $100 for a scissors of the correct size and quality.
But setting aside the scissors for now – especially since it is often too bulky to carry – consider the guillotine cutter. Although there are many brands, the key difference is the single-blade vs. the double-blade.
Rafael’s new Credo cutter is a compact, double-bladed cutter of chromed steel which rests in the palm of the hand and functions more like a scissors than a typical Davidoff-style double-blade. You simply put the head of the cigar between the blades and squeeze them together to cut the cap.
Using a couple of Coppo Churchills (courtesy of Mike Coppotelli of Coppo Cigars) for the test, I lopped off the top of the first one using the new Credo cutter. The cut was firm and left the top looking like a well-mowed lawn. There was the odd bladelet of tobacco sticking up, but the overall cut was good and left no half-cut shreds of the cap at the top of the cigar. A quick brush off the top and the cigar was ready to smoke.
Then I trotted out my faithful P.G. Super Cutter. It’s a single-bladed, double-beveled guillotine, so sharp that after years of use, I can still draw it across the head of a cigar as slowly as I please and still cut perfectly. Even Rafael was impressed with the absolutely flat cut off the top, as level as the top of a granite table, without even a sliver of tobacco above the level cut. Awesome!
Unfortunately, the P.G. Super Cutter (part of the Paul Garmirian line) is limited in availability and if you can find one, it will set you back about $125. There is a plastic version which works up to about a 48 ring, which is more widely sold and is much less expensive (about $12.50), but with the same quality blade.
But my demonstration was to show that a single-bladed cutter is to be preferred over a double-bladed model. Inevitably, even with a “snap” cut, the double-bladed models pinch the head of the cigar and essentially mangle it in the cutting process. A reasonably sharp single-bladed cutter – look for the beveling on both sides of the blade – will avoid this almost every time.
How to cut your cigar is a matter of personal preference. But I know how the Pepsi folks felt when their cola was picked over the leader when I won the cutting contest with Rafael last week in Las Vegas . . . sweet!
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