How cigars are made

Growing: seedbed to field

Cigar tobacco starts in seedbeds, moves to the field as seedlings, and is harvested leaf by leaf as each level of the plant ripens.

That leaf-by-leaf picking is called priming. Bottom leaves come first. They're mild and burn easily. Middle leaves are next, with more flavor. The top leaves, ligero, get the most sun and come off last. Strong, oily, slow to burn.

Some wrapper leaf grows under cloth shade. Less direct sun gives a thinner, smoother leaf with finer veins. That's the leaf that ends up on the outside, where looks matter.

Curing turns green leaf brown

Curing is the slow drying of harvested leaf, hung in ventilated barns until it loses most of its water and turns from green to tan and brown.

Cigar tobacco is air-cured. No fire, no flue. Leaves are strung on poles and hung in tall barns, and the crew opens and closes the vents to manage heat and humidity. Wikipedia puts curing at 25 to 45 days, and its tobacco curing entry says four to eight weeks for air curing. Weather decides where in that range a crop lands.

Too wet, and the leaf rots or molds. Too dry, and it cures unevenly and stays harsh.

Why does cigar tobacco ferment?

Fermentation is a controlled heating of stacked, moistened leaf that builds flavor and aroma, improves the burn and keeps the leaf from rotting.

Cured leaves are piled into large stacks. Inside, heat builds on its own. Workers check the core temperature and break down and rebuild the pile before it overheats, turning the outside leaves in and the inside leaves out.

This is where cigars split from cigarettes. The National Academies report on premium cigars notes cigar filler, binder and wrapper are mostly air-cured and fermented, and fermentation for premium cigars can run months or even years. Darker wrappers usually mean more fermentation. See the shades on our wrapper color chart.

Sorting and aging the leaf

Sorting means grading each leaf by size, color, texture and flaws, so it can go to the job it suits: wrapper, binder or filler.

It's slow, careful hand work. Wrapper leaf gets the strictest eye, since it's the most expensive part of a cigar and the only part you see. Torn or blotchy leaves drop down to binder or filler duty.

The leaf is then baled and rested. Inspected. Re-baled. Rested again. Leaves are kept moist through the cycle so they don't crack. Only when the leaf meets the blender's spec does it reach the rolling floor.

Bunching and rolling by hand

Bunching is folding the filler leaves together and wrapping them in a binder leaf; rolling is putting the wrapper on that bunch and finishing the head.

The buncher folds the filler so air can run down its length. Too tight, no draw. Too loose, a hot, fast burn. That skill is why hand-rolled cigars cost what they do.

Bunches go into wooden molds and rest in a press to set their shape. Some later get squared off, a style explained in our box-pressed guide. Then the roller, or torcedor, stretches a wrapper leaf around the bunch in a spiral, trims it with a curved knife called a chaveta, and fixes a small round cap to the head with vegetable gum. The foot gets cut to length. A skilled roller makes hundreds a day.

Machines can do the same jobs. They usually work with chopped leaf, which is the main split in long filler vs short filler. Every part named here is mapped in the parts of a cigar.

Aging after the roll

Finished cigars rest in a cool, humid aging room so moisture from rolling settles and the leaves in the blend marry.

Rooms are often lined with cedar and held near 70°F and 70% relative humidity. Rest times vary by factory, from weeks to years. After that come bands, cellophane and boxes, and a last check of color so a box looks even.

The aging doesn't have to stop at the factory. Kept steady, a cigar can rest for years at home. The shelf life guide covers how long.

Cigar production questions

Where the production details come from

1. Cigar: manufacture, composition and filler, Wikipedia
2. Curing of tobacco: air curing, Wikipedia
3. Premium Cigars, Chapter 2: characteristics of cigars, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine