The concept that cigars also age was new to me until I joined the forum below. These are more or less CC smokers who range the gamut from “CCs are better” to “I’ve been smoking NCs for twenty years and have yet to find a single NC that favorably compares to my favorite CCs.” Also you will find that they are big components of aging, talking quite a bit about pre-embargo cigars and the astounding qualities of boxes that are more than ten years old.
http://www.internationalcigarclub.com/
I recently made a friend in the smoking lounge at my B&M who smokes both CCs and NCs. I had many questions about CCs, when I met him and he echoed the opinion that I thought was best that the Island is just another place that cigars came from, and that in sum they are not better, just different. But back to aging. He is a huge proponent. He knows the age of all his 1500 cigars.
But when I asked him about how cigars age, in terms of aerobic and anaerobic aging, he didn’t know. His assessment of aging comes in the smoke. He ages cigars and tries them at 3-6 month intervals and can assess whether aging has improved them; he can tell if the cigar’s flavor is peaking, whether at the upward or downward part of the cycle, and tries to smoke them then. He is also a wine drinker and uses the same analysis. It doesn’t matter if you are at the ascending or descending part of the cycle; you locate the peak and consume then. Also, the same aging benefit accrues on either side of the top of the peak, both ascending or descending.
Now to the replies to my post.
MisterE’s comment that Pease states that periodic opening of an aging jar compared to keeping it sealed produces different, not better, results, is also what I read. But the practice of wrapping boxes of cigars to help keep the tobacco in a more protected and constant aging environment (see ICC) points me toward not opening jars or tins. The interruption of environmental variables by opening a jar certainly disrupts the chemical reactions that were occurring before the disruption occurred. I’m of the mind that a more constant environment is more harmonious to the aging processes that were already underway.
ZeroContent states that 70% RH at 70*F is the correct rh to produce optimal aging in cigars. I don’t know whether or not this is true. But applying PT rules, I would disagree in that although low moisture is supposed to be the enemy of aging, I wonder if this higher humidity fosters aging any better than 60 or 65 rh. (And I am told that at 70 rH tobacco beetles hatch). The point is that tobacco won’t age without moisture; is his comment specifically about cigars?
gandalfpc posted about the “tightly wrapped form” of cigars, but I don’t see an impediment to aging CT in this. As moisture can penetrate even the cellophane wrapping of boxes, certainly the chemical process of aging can penetrate wrapper. As deepbass9 said in his post in “Desktop Humidor Cigar Storage” in The Humidor, removing cellophane is the best way to age cigars, and my friend removes it as well as this allows the different flavors of the cigars that surround each other to marry.
The “normally short lifespan” of cigars is new to me. What short lifespan? If so, why? Like some PT components, specifically latakia (but Pease states that it can be aged 20-30 years without degradation; I don’t know), cigars do peak and fade, but to my understanding this takes years.
I don’t claim to be an expert about any of this; we are grappling with what Vito said is the not yet understood process of aging.
