Garson Smart

It happens to the biggest premium cigar aficionados out there: things start to get a little stale. Not "stale" in the sense of dried-out. That can happen, of course, but it's not likely to, if your humidor is set at the standard sixty-seven to seventy-four percent relative humidity range, and as...

Even the most solicitous and devoted cigar aficionado occasionally runs into a little trouble. Taste spoliation; a cigar humidor dial gone wonky; an infestation of tobacco beetles; mold; even the occasionally badly-made cigar from a generally reliable premium cigar factory--any and all of these little mishaps can blight the cigar...

In times like these, even the most hardened urban dwellers take another look at the pleasures and profits of gardening. After all, with supermarket prices going up, farmers going under, and the economy going tipsy, it's tempting to seed that sideyard, rent a plot from the city, or even "claim" a...

In tobacco-related news: Recent reports in several media outlets throw some light on the deepening problem that illegal small cigar factories, known as chinchals, pose for the Cuban government. It turns out that other United States neighbors face similar problems in managing the flow of tobacco. A flurry of news reports...

Newton's third law puts it this way: For every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. But the old '70s soul song says it all much more colorfully: You always have to pay for the fun you've had. No matter what your hobby or pet pastime, there's always some undesirable aspect...

Perhaps the movies are to blame. All those scenes where the powerful businessman or politician says to the ingenuous hero, "May I offer you a cigar," then-without missing a beat-brandishes a gold-embossed cigar case. A case with no humidity controls. A case that is not a humidor. Whatever the reason, many...

To cigar smokers, Nicaragua is already legendary. Through regime change, social upheaval, and revolution, this Latin American nation has produced some of the world's finest tobacco. And since the post-1959 "cigar diaspora"-when many of Cuba's great cigar makers fled the country to seek more propitious conditions than those they expected...

Hunting is as old as humanity-older, in fact-and as new as the latest high-tech gear they're selling at your local sporting goods store. Fossil evidence indicates that early humans were hunting with spears as long as 16,200 years ago, and scientists estimate that we've been eating meat much longer than...

Many novice smokers have embarrassed themselves trying to smoke a cigar with the same frantic, huff-and-puff energy that goes into cigarette smoking. But cigars aren't cigarettes, any more than cheap beer is fine wine, and just as you'd never guzzle a fine Cabernet Sauvignon, you shouldn't just inhale a cigar. The...

For many cigar smokers, the small paper band encircling their stogy is just a piece of trash, to be discarded along with the shrinkwrap around the box. But for others that cigar band is a bit of history - a collectible that adds immeasurably to the romance and mystique of...