Candela cigars

Green means the clock was cut short

Every tobacco leaf starts green, and a candela is simply a leaf that never got the time to turn brown.

A normal wrapper air-cures for a month to 45 days. As it dries slowly, the chlorophyll breaks down and the leaf browns. Then come fermentation and aging. Candela skips all of it. Heat dries the leaf so fast that the green pigment is fixed in place. Wikipedia's cigar article adds that candela leaves are picked before maturity, too.

Because the method defines it, candela isn't tied to a seed or a country. Cigar Aficionado lists Connecticut, Cuba, Ecuador, Florida, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic as places that have grown it.

Inside a candela barn, step by step

A candela cure is a controlled bake: seal the barn, raise the heat slowly, then hit the stems hard, all in 60 to 72 hours.

1. Seal the barn. Walls are papered with cardboard or paper to close every crack. Fresh-picked leaves go in.
2. Start the heat low. Propane heaters or charcoal fires come on, with the bottom vents open so air flows out the roof. The barn reaches about 90°F within two hours and about 100°F by the third.
3. Let the leaves wilt. Held warm for 40 to 48 hours, the leaves go limp.
4. Close the vents and crank it. The heat climbs to about 165°F, sometimes higher, for roughly a day. That dries out the thick stems. A normal tobacco barn never tops about 90°F.
5. Bring back the moisture. The dry leaves are too brittle to touch. Windows and vents open so overnight dew softens them, or a steamer does the job in dry weather.
6. Sort, grade, box. The leaves are graded and packed for storage or rolling.

Figures come from Cigar Aficionado's 2003 report on candela growers. Farms vary the timing.

Why is candela leaf stored in a refrigerator?

Candela leaf is kept refrigerated because, Cigar Aficionado reports, it can't be stored in ordinary tobacco warehouses.

It's a fussy leaf. Cigar Aficionado lists the hazards: sunlight lightens it, heat darkens it and water stains it. That last one matters at the rolling table. Rolling a candela by hand takes a roller who knows the leaf, the magazine notes, because one careless drop of water marks it.

The AMS years: when America smoked green

From about 1958 to the early 1970s, candela was the dominant wrapper on cigars sold in the United States.

Cigar Aficionado traces it to Cuba's Partido region in the 1940s, where heat in the barns turned some lower leaves green by accident. Americans went on to smoke billions of green cigars, sold under the name American Market Selection. Wikipedia's cigar article still lists AMS as a synonym for candela, with EMS for natural shades and SMS for maduro and oscuro.

Then taste moved on. Candela fell from favor in the early 1970s and was largely absent from the 1990s cigar boom.

Grassy, light and dry: the usual verdict

Candela wrappers tend to taste light and dry, with grassy or green-tea notes that no brown wrapper gives.

That fits Wikipedia's rule of thumb that light wrappers add a hint of dryness. Some smokers also pick up a faint sweetness. Expect a tendency, not a guarantee: the filler under that green leaf can be anything. Check the blend on the strength and body scale, find candela at the pale end of the wrapper color chart, and look up "grassy" and "hay" on the flavor wheel.

For the opposite end of the process, a long, hot ferment that turns leaf black, see maduro.

Green wrapper questions

Where the candela curing figures come from

1. It's Not Easy Being Green, Cigar Aficionado
2. Glossary: Candela, Cigar Aficionado
3. Cigar: candela, double claro and the AMS designation, Wikipedia