"Tobacco Farming: Part Six" by Nick Perdomo
Perdomo uses this highly-detailed form of classification, he says, to ensure his cigars are blended consistently and guarantee great flavor profiles year after year.
Easton, PA (PRWEB) September 05, 2013
The all-new Cigar Advisor is an online cigar magazine that brings a fresh, irreverent, and down-to-earth perspective on all things cigars to thousands of smokers. In addition to educational cigar content and behind-the-scenes cigar industry articles from some of the business’s top names, Cigar Advisor delivers an array of content about a variety of topics of interest to people who enjoy the cigar lifestyle. The magazine also features cigar reviews and ratings submitted by real smokers. Cigar Advisor has just published their September installment of “Tobacco Farming,” an exposé on the making of cigars by Nick Perdomo, CEO of Tabacalera Perdomo.
“Size matters,” says Nick Perdomo, noted cigar maker and Cigar Advisor contributor. “When you smoke a premium handmade cigar you're smoking the entire leaf. Because the leaves are sorted by size, if I'm going to make a 5" Robusto, I'm not going to use an 8" leaf, since almost half of it would be wasted.” Nick is describing part of the process he uses when sorting tobacco wrapper leaf in this, his latest installment of “Tobacco Farming.”
Nick describes the sort as a very detailed process, that starts with grading: “We classify the tobaccos in each region first by the TYPE of leaf: Seco, Viso, and Ligero. Then we separate each type of leaf by its SIZE as a small (pequeño), medium (mediano), and large (grande). After we classify the leaves by size we then grade them in terms of their QUALITY as A (perfect), A- (a minor flaw), B (a hole or tear) and C (lots of holes).” Perdomo uses this highly-detailed form of classification, he says, to ensure his cigars are blended consistently and guarantee great flavor profiles year after year.
After classifying the filler leaves, Perdomo says it's time for stripping the veins. “We literally strip the central vein down the middle at about 50 % of the leaf, so when the roller gets the tobacco it's much more pliable and the bunch remains straight.” Nick advises that he doesn’t want the thick central vein of the leaf rolled into the cigar. “For one,” he says, “you'll feel it, and two, it can make the cigar taste bitter.” However, he notes, some of the vein is kept intact to lend structural integrity to the leaf: “if we didn't, the tobacco would be more likely to rip or tear during rolling.”
After the leaves are classified a second time, they are slowly dried to achieve a moisture content of no more than 14%. This keeps them supple enough to withstand the next stage where they are compressed together under pressure, then baled, and moved to a storage room for additional aging until they are ready to be made into cigars.
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Cigar Advisor magazine is a digital publication created for real cigar enthusiasts who love tobacco and live the lifestyle. Cigar smokers are passionate about almost everything they do - whether it's the drinks they savor, the food they devour, the cars and motorcycles they dream of, the sports they're fanatical about or the women they love, Cigar Advisor shares those passions with a razor-sharp edge, soaking up each day and experience as if it were our last. Find that passion and more on display at CigarAdvisor.com.
