Selecting a cigar from a humidor

The most important aspect to know and care about, when looking to choose a cigar from any humidor, is the time you have available in which to smoke it.

There’s no point wasting a double corona ( a good two hour smoke) when you you have less than an hour to enjoy your cigar. Perhaps a petit corona would be a better bet….

Naturally, if the cigar is being selected from your own humidor, I’m sure that you, or your butler, always ensures that the humidity within the humidor is correct and that the water in the humidor’s humidifier is checked regularly. Taking care of your cigar humidor is paramount - that’s quite an investment nestling in there!

If however you are choosing a cigar from a store, club or restaurant’s humidor simply give the cigar a gentle squeeze. You should feel a slight ‘give’ and it will spring back, a stale dried out cigar will not. The fresher a cigar the greater the ‘give’.

The best cigars are manufactured in humid countries - Cuba, The Dominican Republic and so on, hence the need to replicate that ‘climate’ inside the humidor and keep those cigars nice and moist. I don’t care what anybody says - if that cigar isn’t ’squeezable’ it’s stale and of no use to me! Let nobody tell you otherwise!

Cigar Humidor Tip: When you’ve purchased a new humidor be sure NOT to add your cigars to it straight away! The new humidor will simply suck the moisture out of your cigars as it’s not ‘hydrated’ yet :-) - bad news indeed!

So, first add the distilled water to the humidor’s humidifier and leave, securely closed, for a few days to impregnate that lovely cedar wood with moisture. Keep the humidor out of direct sunlight, drafts and at a room temperature of around 70F.

The humidity should read between 68-72, but anywhere within 66-79 is fine, within the humidor. Measured via a hygrometer which comes fitted as standard in all good humidors.

If you're a new visitor to the Bureau, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. If RSS feeds remain a mystery to you then you can still get informed, via email, when new additions are made to the site by using the Subscriber sign in box on the upper right of this page. Thanks for visiting!