I’m not convinced there’s a point to asking, “Why am I here?” Assuming there is a point, I’m not convinced there’s an answer. However, if I were to play along with the premise for a few minutes, I’d have to say my answer would be, “To smoke cigars.” No joke. I’ve been told that’s “sad”.
Every Miss America contestant and her alternate wants to bring about world peace, or feed the starving, or cure cancer, or help whatever non-white abused people are popular among celebrities at the moment, or nuke the whales, or something altruistic that proclaims the individual’s moral superiority at the largest possible scale. When one person out of the six billion on this Earth scales back his ambition just a bit, it’s “sad”. I figure if the 5,999,999,999 other people on this planet can’t get any of the items on the aforementioned moral superiority checklist done, one person dedicating their time to cigars isn’t going to change the equation much.
Because there is no universally accepted answer to the question, many people live their lives with doubt about their purpose, or no sense of purpose at all. On the other hand, I’m not one of them. See that picture in the upper left corner of this page? (Thank you Paul Shaner.) It’s me… with a cigar in my mouth. Knowing what I like and having a clear idea of how I’d like to spend my life hardly qualifies as “sad”.
I’ve been enjoying the all-natural goodness of quality cigars for 14 years now. I’ve smoked many different kinds, and I’ve gone through a number of favorites. I’ve seen the prices of my former favorites, La Unica 100s, rise from $1.75 to over $5 a shot at my local smoke shop. I want to support my local tobacconist with my cigar dollars, but frankly, JR Cigar has them beat by a mile. I understand there’s a difference in business models and expenses, but often times buying smokes from JR, with shipping, is cheaper than anyplace in town (and the selection is often wider). The drawback, however, is that JR only sells boxes, not individual cigars. So when I want individuals of different kinds, or I want to try out something before I buy an entire box, I buy local. Stockpiles of the good stuff come from JR.
One thing that has remained consistent is my love for cigars with a maduro wrapper. I’ve tried some others. Most cigars with a natural wrappers weren’t a hit with me. I’ve had some oscuros where the wrapper burned my lips as I put it in my mouth. I’m looking at you, Santa Rosa. Good smokes, but too strong to be my every day puff. As much as I’ve smoked in variety and quantity in my almost-decade and a half of enjoyment, there was one wrapper type I hadn’t tried until this weekend.
I’ll borrow a little information from this article from Cigar Aficionado in case you don’t want to read the whole thing. From the late 1950s until sometime in the 1970s, the most popular cigars in America weren’t any shade of brown. They were green. They were so popular, in fact, that the wrapper type became known as American Market Selection (AMS). It’s also known as candella and double claro. These green wrappers are created by employing a very fast curing process that cooks the chlorophyll into the leaf.
For whatever reason, these green wrappers fell out of favor and seem to be a novelty these days. I got the urge to try some double claro cigars about a week and a half ago, and just yesterday I finally found what may be the only box in Dayton on a shelf in the humidor at Arrow Wine. I had checked the area’s biggest tobacconist, The Wharf, the day before and the employee there told me they used to have some double claro cigars available, but they were so unpopular and had sat on the shelf unsold for so long that they cured into natural wrappers and were tossed out.
The double claros I found were made by Don Tomas, about 6-5/8 inches long, and I’d say a 42-ring. They cost me about $2.50 each, which is the upper limit of what I’ll pay for a cigar these days. (And yes, there are some very good cigars out there under this price.)
The first thing I noticed about these cigars is that they smelled plant-y rather than cigar-y. It wasn’t as strong as, say, a handful of mowed grass or some shrub you just ripped out of the yard, but it had a vegetable scent to it. Other cigars just smell like cigars. I realize that other cigars are themselves vegetable matter, and therefore by definition have a vegetable smell of a different kind to them, but when you smell a cigar you’re not reminded of yard work. These double claros reminded me that my gardening boy hadn’t done his mowing this week.
I had read a lot of conflicting things about how these green cigars tasted. I was initially attracted by the description of sour, because when I used to be able to drink in a way I no longer can, cocktails with strong sour mix were my favorites. Then I read that they were sweet, directly contradicting the sour. Then I read they were very light and pleasant. And then I read gross. So who knew what the hell they were. The only way to find out was to try a couple.
Obviously the taste of a cigar is determined by more than the wrapper. I’d assume that each style made by each manufacturer is a little different. And for some people, there’s likely a psychological component to smoking a green cigar. They may have the idea in their mind that they’re smoking a raw leaf (even though all cigars are cured leaves of some kind) and it’s just gotta be gross. Understandable, but I didn’t find that to be the case.
The Don Tomas cigar I’m smoking right now certainly has a cigar flavor you’d expect, but it’s lighter than the maduros I’m used to and there is something unique about it I can’t accurately describe. It’s not like having a brush fire in your mouth, but there is a small bit of something plant-y. Not so much that it overwhelms the expected cigar taste, but there’s a hint every now and again. I like ‘em.
I think I’ll order a box of Mr. B Lonsdale double claros as soon as I have room in my humidor. Mr. B makes some good maduros that aren’t expensive, and 20 to a box means I won’t be stuck with a ton of them if I decide I don’t like ‘em. JR Famous Churchill maduros are my daily smoke, and they make a double claro as well, but they’re 50 to a box. If the Mr. B’s pan out, I’ll try the Famous also.
If you love cigars as I do and you want to try something old and different, give a double claro variety of your favorite smoke a burn. I think double claros will have their day once again in the not-too-distant future.
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