Ageing Cuban cigars by Simon Chase
One of the lasting memories I retain from my earliest days in the cigar trade thirty years ago was being escorted round all the great cigar shops in London’s West End. My guide was the late David Baxter, then Hunters & Frankau’s Managing Director, a man whose experience stretched back to the early 1950s.
We visited Robert Lewis at 19 St James's Street (now J. J. Fox) where we met John Croley who had joined his father in the business in the 1930s. We called in at the J. J. Fox, then in Burlington Gardens, to see Fred Dew who sold his first box of cigars in the late’20s. We also crossed the threshold of the hallowed humidor at Alfred Dunhill on Jermyn Street.
All these emporia were impressive. There was a quiet, confident calm about them, more reminiscent of a bespoke tailor’s premises than a bustling retail shop. True there were cigars on view but most were in closed boxes discretely stored in glass fronted cabinets. I already knew how much of our annual business in Havana cigars went through these stores, but it was hard to see how they did it.
The answer was provided when, as members of the trade albeit a green-horn in my case, we were invited into the inner sanctums. Here upstairs, downstairs or, in the case of Dunhill, though steel gates we entered a different world where literally thousands of boxes of cigars in innumerable sizes from countless different brands, virtually all Cuban, were shelved.
In my naivety the next question in my mind was why on earth did they have so much stock? On closer examination I noticed that probably half of the boxes carried a small, white label on which was written a name and a date. The names in many cases could have been copied straight out of Who’s Who – multi-millionaires, politicians, actors, film directors - and the dates stretched back five, ten, sometimes twenty years or more.
My perplexity must have been evident because it was soon explained to me that Cuban cigars improve with age and should, like fine wines, be laid down. I was told that in shops like these no Havana cigar would be offered to a customer until at least two years had past since it was imported. In fact before the Second World War the period had been five to six years, but modern demands on cash flow had put a stop to that.
The named boxes were known as “customers’ paid reserve” and it was standard practice for the shops to store cigars after they had been purchased free of charge until they were judged to be fully conditioned and ready for smoking. Clients could call in at any time to check how their cigars were progressing and would be encouraged to replenish their reserve with any particularly notable Havanas that might have arrived in the meantime.
I had witnessed one of the most intriguing, if not mystical, aspects of the Cuban cigar trade, which clearly enjoyed a long tradition amongst London’s finest cigar merchants.
Since then I have devoted some time to trying (I am no scientist in any shape or form) to understand what lies behind the process of ageing Cuban cigars. Here are some of my conclusions.
Any consumable product whose raw material is subjected to a process of fermentation will over time change its taste if the process of fermentation is permitted to continue unchecked. This is readily understood in the case of grape juice when it is transformed into wine or spirits, but less so with tobacco.
Perhaps this reflects the fact that the most widely used type of tobacco, that which is found in cigarettes, is not fermented at all and, after an accelerated process at high temperatures known as flue curing, becomes a stable product ready to be used in manufacture.
By contrast dark cigar tobacco is subject to a much more gentle air curing process. This is followed by a series of quite radical fermentations with water acting as the catalyst. These invoke oxidation reducing the nicotine content in the leaves, eliminating soluble carbohydrates and through the deamination of nitrogen compounds releasing copious volumes of ammonia. At the same time the pH of the leaves becomes more alkaline.
Non scientists will be relieved to hear that even the tobacco industry’s standard reference work, the Voges Tobacco Encyclopedia, upon which I relied for the previous paragraph, states that "The process is complex and still not understood fully".
Whilst the complete fermentation process used for Cuban tobacco, followed by long periods of maturation in bales, reduces impurities in the leaves to a minimum, a residual content remains that will form a basis for further chemical reaction.
During the cigar making process the five different types of leaves that compose the blend are brought together for the first time. They are dampened to make them malleable for the cigar maker and the moisture sparks a further fermentation.
After construction, steps are taken in the factory’s condition-controlled store room to allow the cigars to settle down, but nevertheless the results of this final burst of chemical activity can remain noticeable for year or two in the form a of hint of ammonia on the palate. Cigars that react in this way are said to be going through the "sick period" (sometimes referred to as the "dumb period").
The first purpose of ageing a cigar is to allow plenty of time for the last vestiges of ammonia to disperse.
Further ageing guarantees one thing: the taste of a Cuban cigar will continue to develop and change. Whether such change appeals to your taste is for you and you alone to decide.
It is generally accepted that the taste is likely to improve for up to around 15 years after which most cigars will tend to go down hill and start to lose flavour. Improvements to look for include a smoother, less tanniny taste and better burning characteristics.
However there are cigars that sail happily past their 15th birthday and prove, in my experience, simply delicious even after 30 years or more.
Does the tradition of ageing cigars continue in London today? The answer is yes. You are still welcome to invest in a personal "Keep", as the lockers are known at Dunhill, or to add your name to the array of the rich and famous at J. J. Fox, Sautter of Mayfair, Davidoff of London or internet retailer Cgars Ltd (the last three appeared on the London scene since my ‘70s tour).
However the events of the last thirty years have, at times, challenged this time-honoured practice. The inevitable cycle of recessions intermittently dampened the willingness of even the most well-heeled to invest in cigars, but perhaps the most testing time occurred when, during the 1990s, the supply of Cuban cigars was greatly diminished.
For a period of around five years from 1992 to 1997, following the fall of the Soviet Union, it was virtually impossible to obtain the quantity of Habanos that people wanted and certainly not in their preferred sizes. The idea of starting a reserve became impractical. I remember at the time feeling more than a touch of envy for those far-sighted smokers who had laid down sufficient of their favourite cigars to last out the famine.
A by-product of this period was the spectacular increase in the number cigar auctions and the money they generated. For a while auctions were the best if not the only way to buy the cigars you wanted regardless of their age. Christie’s in London led the way to a climax in 1999 when a pack of three cigars from the 1960s (Cuban Partagas Lusitanias) was sold for £3,000 ($6,000) before interest gradually waned.
Full supplies returned in 2001, but by this time most smokers had become accustomed to the taste of younger cigars.
Then, in 2003, a seminal event occurred to rekindle the interest in ageing cigars. It originated not in London but from the other side of the world in Hong Kong. A gentleman by the name of Min Ron NEE, after several years of dedicated research in Cuba, London and around the world, published a weighty, nearly 500-page tome entitled “An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Post-Revolution Havana Cigars”.
Not only does this book provide an invaluable reference for the most discerning collector of vintage Habanos, but it also provides an extensive insight into the author’s research into ageing cigars.
To establish his credentials Mr. Nee reveals that it is comparatively normal amongst the cigar enthusiasts of Hong Kong to possess 10,000 Cuban cigars each and that collections of 40,000 or 50,000 cigars are not uncommon. He is based in the right location to conduct such research.
If William Shakespeare divides human life into seven ages, Mr. Nee considers that the existence of a cigar falls into four. He starts with the Sick Period, followed by the First Maturation, the Second Maturation and the Third Maturation.
There is no substitute for buying a copy Mr Nee’s volume should you wish to share the full extent of his wisdom; he is, I am told, a man of science. Nevertheless I will try to extract some of the key points he associates with each age.
We have already covered the Sick Period, which usually lasts between one and two years after manufacture, although perhaps I should add, as does Mr. Nee, that it is perfectly acceptable to smoke cigars of this age. They might display some of the fire of youth, but that may well be what you enjoy.
The First Maturation, which is when the cigar is at its “most flavoursome”, occurs, he states, at different times according to the strength of the brand in question. With light flavoured brands like El Rey del Mundo or Rafael Gonzalez, it can take place after two to three years, with medium flavoured brands like Romeo y Julieta after five to six years, and with full bodied cigars like Partagas or Bolivar after as long as ten to fifteen years.
Considerable patience is required for your cigar to reach the Second Maturation because Mr. Nee reckons it will take fifteen to twenty years for most cigars and some will never make it. The reward is a reduction in the taste of tannins resulting in a very smooth, mellow, complex and classy flavour.
The ultimate Third Maturation, Mr. Nee continues, is all about bouquet, something that also occurs in the greatest wines when they are left to age for twenty years or more. It happens rarely with cigars but, when it does, the best word Mr. Nee can find to describe the experience is “ethereal”.
At Hunters & Frankau we have recently taken a small step to help you on your way. Some years ago we started to put some cigars on one side for ageing.
Earlier this year we released the first batch of what we call “Aged Habanos” from 1997 and 1998. To help identify them we have placed gold sticker on each box and added a band to each cigar with the year of its vintage.
It is important to note here that unlike wines where the year on the bottle represents the year when the grapes were harvested, the vintage of a Cuban cigar is measured from the date when the finished cigars were placed in boxes at the factory. The tobaccos within the cigars would have been harvested several years earlier subject to the type of leaf.
You should also be aware that a number of manufacturers outside Cuba have, from time to time, declared vintages on their cigars. So far as I know, this has always related to the year of the harvest of some of the tobaccos used in making them, mostly the wrappers.
The amount of ageing that tobaccos undergo before they are made into cigars is important and can have a beneficial effect on the flavour, but this is not what we are talking about with Aged Habanos.
Our first release is quite small. It consists of just over 21,000 cigars in 930 boxes in 16 different sizes from 7 Cuban brands. Nevertheless it provides an excellent opportunity to start understanding the effects of ageing.
Two in particular come to mind that support Mr Nee’s thesis to a tee. One is a 1998 Romeo y Julieta Prince of Wales - a Churchill size (7 inches by 47 ring gauge). As a medium flavoured cigar it should have reached its First Maturation, which means its “most flavoursome”, after five to six years. Now at ten years of age it boasts plenty of elegant taste, but already the notes of tannin have receded and I get the feeling that, although it is well worth smoking now, it does not have quite enough body to make it to the Second Maturation.
The other is a much smaller cigar, the Partagas Tres Petit Corona (4 5/8th inches by 40 ring gauge. Partagas is a full-flavoured brand and hence, according to Mr. Nee, likely to take longer to reach its First Maturation. It also dates from 1998, but its taste is still huge – rich, spicy and full of delicious tannin. I would say it has only just got over its Sick Period and will enjoy a spectacular First Maturation. It should continue happily into the Second Maturation and quite possibly make it to the Third.
If you want to know what Nr. Nee means by “ethereal”, buy a box; you’ll only have a decade to wait.