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The cigar ratings supplied by publications like Cigar Magazine and Cigar Aficionado form an important part of the modern cigar industry. For cigar smokers, these ratings provide guidance in a crowded market.

As pressed-for-time moviegoers may look to Roger Ebert for guidance at the multiplex, smokers use the magazines’ ratings to cut down on their in-store browsing time. For cigar makers, meanwhile, the ratings can be the touch of life – or the kiss of death. When Cigar Aficionado gave a high rating to a Fuente Spanish Lonsdale cigar, the magazine’s imprimatur helped to cause a run on the brand, rendering it scarce and highly sought-after and increasing the profile of Fuente’s cigars in general. Every cigar maker covets a 90-or-higher rating from these influential judges.

But where do these numbers actually come from? For staffers at Cigar Aficionado, the reviewing process starts at the store. While music and book reviewers are often given free “review copies” of CDs or books (a practice that makes things convenient for the reviewer, but also diminishes his or her independence), Cigar Aficionado tries to buy cigars at close to retail prices.

This leads to big cigar bills for the magazine – but it also means the cigars they review are as much like the ones you buy at the store as is possible. (Unlike CDs or books, of course, every cigar is slightly different in composition and taste.) Sometimes, if a cigar is hard to find in stores, the magazine will request “review cigars”; ditto for cases when the magazine is trying to preview a cigar before it hits stores.

The members of the panel – all of them longstanding magazine staffers – are told nothing about the identity, price range, source, or country of origin of the cigar. A “tasting coordinator” – not a member of the panel – removes the cigar’s band so that it cannot be identified by the panel’s members.

The blank, anonymous cigar is then assigned a number so that its identity can be retrieved after it’s rated. The members of the tasting panel then retire, separately, to their offices to smoke the cigars without consulting each other. Each member of the panel assigns the cigar a certain number of points, based on its performance in any of four categories.

First of all, cigars are rated by APPEARANCE and CONSTRUCTION. Is the cigar visually pleasing? Is the wrapper smooth, or wadded-looking? Is it moist to the touch or dry? Does it stay firm? Is it veiny or soggy? After all, a great-tasting cigar that wilts the minute you take it out of the box, or looks too unappetizing to be placed in someone’s mouth, does smokers no good. Cigars can win up to 15 points in this category for being well-made and attractive.

Secondly, of course, the cigar is rated on its FLAVOR – a category that carries with it 25 of the possible 100 points. Who needs a good-looking but brackish cigar? Cigars should not taste bitter or leave a nasty aftertaste. Both taste and aftertaste should be smooth but full, complicated, and rich.

A maximum of 25 points can be won for various qualities ranged together under the general heading of SMOKING CHARACTERISTICS. How does it burn? Is it hard to light? Does it burn one-sidedly? Will the smoke burn your mouth, or feel cool and comfortable as it should? How hard do you have to pull to get a mouthful? All these questions and more are considered.

Finally, the tasters each give a score (up to 35 points) for OVERALL IMPRESSION. (Flavor counts most here.) Is the cigar good, bad – or great? And the question utmost in any dedicated smoker’s mind – is it worth the money? The panel’s various scores in each category are averaged and a final score is the result.

Ratings, of course, are always subjective, depending on individuals’ taste – even if those individuals have well-developed, highly educated tastes. Your mileage may vary. For any smoker, the ultimate authority should always be your own tastebuds!

As the 1990s dawned, few industries seemed deader than cigar sales and manufacture.

From its height in the 1850s – when Cuba alone exported 356.6 million cigars – the cigar had fallen into virtual moribundity. Its market had been conquered by cheap, ubiquitous cigarettes. Its image was tarnished in the United States by, among other things, the persistent (and not entirely unfounded) popular association between cigar smoking and the “fat cats” of the Gilded Age – a picture wedged into its place in the popular consciousness by the work of crusading editorial cartoonists.

By the late 1980s, the industry was flatlining, with an aging customer base and few new customers drifting in: the classic example of a product reaching what marketing experts call “old age.” That’s not to say “senility.”

But in 1992 something changed. (Not a bad year for it – with voters decisively rejecting Ronald Reagan’s vice president at the polls and heavy metal yielding to Nirvana, it was a year for change.) The number of imported cigars wafted gently upward during the fourth quarter of the year, yielding a four-percent increase over 1991. The following year, imports rose by ten percent.

The industry was elated. But no one was prepared for what came next – 12 percent growth in 1994, 33 percent growth in 1995, 36 percent first-quarter growth for 1996, shops unable to keep product on the shelves, backorders of 55 million units in 1996, retailers buying shopping-carts full of cigars from distributors and paying retail price just to keep their stores stocked. Women, for the first time, began smoking cigars in large numbers, and prices rose at a fast clip – the $2 premium cigar more or less disappeared over a three-year period. Cigar bars proliferated.

Cigar-friendly restaurants, well, came into existence.

What happened? One observer, Norman Sharp of the Cigar Association of America, told the New York Times in 1996 that the new prevalence of cigar bars goes back to a single Boston restaurant. “It started in the ’80s, when the Ritz-Carlton in Boston hosted a cigar dinner.”

In the same story, Sharp also gave credit to what he called “political correctness,” the all-purpose rhetorical villain of the 1990s. “People are saying they’re tired of being told what to do – or in this case, being told not to use tobacco – and turned to cigar smoking as a way of flipping the bird at well, somebody.

Other observers give some credit to Cigar Aficionado, launched in 1992, a quarterly glossy publication that improved cigars status in society. In Cigar Aficionado, alongside cigar reviews and industry news, you can also read up on new luxury goods, while enjoying interviews with prominent cigar smokers from Jack Nicholson to Whoopi Goldberg. As Runner’s World did for the nascent jogging movement of the 1970s, Cigar Aficionado transformed thousands of isolated cigar lovers into an interest group, simply by addressing them as one.

For another explanation, consider the growth in coffee consumption during the 1990s – the years when Starbucks conquered America. The new prominence of this old, almost stodgy beverage (not unlike the cigar in its public image) could be, and was, traced to the explosion in average working hours during the decade, when a centuries-long trend toward shorter working weeks ground, in the US though not in Europe, to a halt. Bedroom communities grew, while deep social ties grew frayed. American white-collar workers desperately needed something, some small pleasure or indulgence to take the sting out of their epic workweeks. Why not cigars?

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The relationship between cigars and glamor is very old and cigars have often been used to magnify the persona of the character onscreen as well as off screen. Many actors got recognition just because they were smoking a cigar. People love Pierce Bronson as James Bond but the character would have lost its glamor without the stylish puff of the cigar. People simply love the appearance of a detective that smokes cigars – it makes his style stand out. Cigars have also been treated as the expression of a deep muse or intellectuals.

Moreover, it’s not only the detective or the professional; the strength of cigars is used to energize the nerves of poets and authors. No one can ignore the charisma that becomes visible in the personality of a man holding a cigar.

Every one wants to glamorize themselves. Everyone wants to look charismatic and cigars make that easy!  They also provide a relaxing smoking experience. In general, cigar smoking is viewed as the “civilized” alternative to cigarette smoking. Unlike cigarettes, cigars have a distinct, elegant stigma attached to them that often appeals to the older generation of people, particularly those with a higher than average income. They are most often associated with an elevated status in society and many cigar accessories reflect that fact. This fact also adds to the glamor of the cigar as every one tries to follow the trends which are prevalent in upper classes.

Magazines like Cigar Aficionado portray cigar smoking as alluring and perhaps slightly risky (particularly for women), and so the hobby strikes a chord with young Americans. Celebrities are often photographed at parties or social gatherings with a cigar in hand and cigar lounges find regular folks trying to emulate these stars. Clubs and societies, particularly those dominated by men, often design their regular activities around the ritual of cigar smoking. In part because of its current glamor and in part because of its practical affordability, cigar smoking has never been hotter, trendier and more profitable.

So if you want to be charismatic and add glamour to your persona you might want to give a cigar for try! You can still get discount prices on cigars! You should visit texcigars.com which offers premium cigars, accessories and cigar samplers.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/wines-and-spirits-articles/cigar-the-glamour-factor-1775791.html

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