Cigar Fillers - What's the Story?

Just what's inside that cigar you just smoked? Many times cigars as favors are handed out, and it would be nice to know something about them. Many cigars, especially some of the more premium brands, use very different grades of tobacco for the filler and the wrapper. "Long filler cigars" signify a much higher quality cigar, using exclusively long leaves of tobacco throughout the cigar. These type of cigars will also employ a third variety of tobacco leaf, a "binder", between the filler leaves and the outer wrapper. This enables expert cigar makers to use very delicate and attractive leaves as an outer wrapper. These are very nearly always blended varieties of cigar tobacco, and are among the most sought after cigars you can imagine. Many times each part of the cigar tobacco leaves will come from different countries.

In most cheap cigars, the filler consists of chopped up tobacco leavings, and it's not uncommon to find a bogus type of cigar "paper", made up entirely of tobacco pulp and used to bind the cigar together.

Producing a Fine Cigar

The next time you're hosting a cigar catering event, you can wow your guests with some specialized knowledge of just how a cigar makes it from the field to your home.

A master blender is in charge of the process, and gives the cigar rollers several boxes of tobacco leaves, from four to six; and a formula for how the cigar is to be constructed.

The cigar rollers then presses the leaves into a bunch, and then cuts them to the correct size, after which they are put into a press, where they stay for about an hour.

After this time, the molded leaves come back to his table where he carefully wraps each one with a wrapper leaf that is chosen for both visual and aromatic qualities. The roller dabs a spot of vegetable glue onto the head of the cigar so that it won't unravel.

Then they are inspected carefully by their supervisors, where after passing inspection they go the aging room, where they may sit for some months to age before they are sent out to the world for consumption.