A great introduction

Israeli food and wine writer Daniel Rogov gives a great introduction to cigarillo production and the market in various countries in this essay.

The piece opens with an elegant description of cigarillo culture at the Paris opera:

I was still quite young when I realized that for two hundred years the intermission between the first and second acts at the Opera in Paris has been timed to last precisely nineteen minutes. That provides enough time to stroll from my opera box to the bar, to acquire glasses of Veuve Clicquot Champagne for my date and myself and to find a place to stand overlooking the grand staircase, there to ponder on the qualities of the Champagne, the opera, or the romantic history of the exquisite rococo building in which I was standing. If there was anything at all to destroy this otherwise perfect setting, it was the knowledge that the eight minutes remaining in the intermission did not offer enough time to enjoy the cigar I was carrying in the inner pocket of my smoking jacket.

Whatever I may have been as a young man, I was not completely obtuse, so it did not take long to realize that the solution of the most sophisticated cigar smokers during such occasions was to turn to a cigarillo, one of those small, thin elegant cigars meant largely for those who do not have the leisurely hour or so that a Churchill or a Double Corona requires. Today, more than half of all European cigar smokers carry a cigar case in their right hand jacket pocket and a small, elegant white box of cigarillos in their other inner pocket.

The author then goes on to describe the production of cigarillos and to highlight some of his favorites. As the title of this post states, a great introduction to the world of small cigars and well-written, too.

~ by Ben Brown on July 5, 2008.