The art of blending

Making cigars is about much more than just rolling up some tobacco leaves. Blenders work painstakingly to achieve desired flavor profiles using tobaccos grown from different seed stocks and in different regions that have been cured in various ways. Much like master blenders in the whiskey world, with barrels of whiskey, cigar blenders aim to create the best possible product using the leaves available to them.

Cigar blenders have to consider a number of factors. If the filler tobaccos have too many leaves, air will not be able to pass through the cigar. Binder leaves can add to the overall flavor of the cigar on top of their primary job of holding the filler tobaccos together. Wrapper leaves are typically the predominant flavor profile in the cigar, but many modern blenders