Just a very casual post about the age of cigars.

Connoisseurs are getting more and more into smoking vintage cigars, and also a lot of producer are forcing this development.

This obviously raises the question, if the boxing date makes a big difference.

Yes it does. But don’t think, that you can compare it with wine vintages.

What is the difference?

Wine really is related on the grape quality, of the sugar levels, the summer it was grown and the autumn it was harvested.

You have really not so good vintages and incredible great vintages for good wines.

Not so cigars. Of course the quality of the tobacco supposed to have a major impact on the cigar - though the style of fermentation, and the blending of the tobacco have the major impact. But these points just give you a different kind of puro...

It depends on the destiny of the cigar...

Shortly after the millennium I read quite bad comments about cigars which came from the time between 1999 and 2001. Even I had myself some unpleasant smokes.

The fault of the cigar [hence the producer]? Definitely not. We only might misperceived those stogies.

Now those cigars are superlative denoted of dark oily wrappers. Problem was, that when people wanted to smoke them directly; they were too oily - so they had a rather bad draw, a lot of congeners...

This was bad to smoke immediately, but great to mature.

I smoked only few Cuban cigars, which were well matured but disappointing... and these cigars obviously were not really flavorful and of a great quality. But even simple Fonsecas, became more interesting after few years - sometimes even great [ok, I like sometimes even young Fonsecas - especially early in the days, when other brands could pull your legs away].

So what? If you are finding old boxes, try one cigar out of them. If it taste bland, don’t bother... if they are still strong and have congeners, assess, if you have facilities to age them properly [another 3 or 5 or 10 years up to few decades]; if not than don’t buy them, if you have a big humidor go ahead.

And if they are just great now, don’t hesitate and don’t even think about to buy these overpriced “premium” brands which are usually too young, which are not ready for another decade or two!

Go to the brands, which are not so popular. Of those you can find great treasures.