Cigar School
25 lessons across four levels, roughly 233 minutes of reading. Instruction rather than opinion — where the trade disagrees, the lesson says so and explains the tradeoff.
Anatomy of a Cigar
Learn the physical parts of a cigar, what each one contributes to the smoke, and how to read construction quality with your hands before you ever light it.
How to Cut a Cigar
Learn where the cap actually ends, how to choose between a guillotine, punch and V-cut, and how to open a cigar without unraveling it.
How to Light a Cigar
Learn to toast the foot, build an even ember across the whole diameter, and avoid the scorched, bitter first third that comes from rushing.
How to Smoke a Cigar
Learn the cadence that keeps a cigar cool, how to retrohale without hurting yourself, what the ash is telling you, and when to put it down.
Reading a Cigar Band
Learn what a band legitimately tells you about a cigar, what it only implies, and which markings carry actual regulatory or origin meaning.
Your First Ten Cigars
A deliberate plan for your first ten cigars that teaches you your own palate quickly, plus what to spend, where to buy, and what to write down.
Understanding Primings
Learn how a tobacco plant's leaves differ by height, what volado, seco, viso and ligero each contribute, and why priming is the vocabulary blenders actually use.
Wrapper Varieties and What They Actually Do
Learn the major wrapper types by origin and cultivation, what each one genuinely contributes to flavor, and how much of a cigar's character it is really responsible for.
Vitolas: How Size Changes a Blend
Learn why the same blend tastes different in different sizes, how ring gauge and length change combustion and leaf ratios, and how to choose a size for the occasion.
Humidor Setup and Seasoning
Learn to season a new humidor properly, choose a target relative humidity with the tradeoffs stated honestly, and calibrate the instruments you are trusting.
Diagnosing Burn Problems
Learn to tell canoeing from tunneling from a true plug, identify whether the cause is storage, construction or your own cadence, and fix each one mid-smoke.
Building a Tasting Vocabulary
Learn to separate taste from aroma from structure, build a personal lexicon that is actually repeatable, and describe a cigar in terms another smoker can use.
How a Blend Is Constructed
Learn how a blender moves from an idea to a finished recipe, the constraints of combustion and supply that shape every decision, and how to reverse-engineer a blend from the smoke.
Fermentation and the Pilon
Learn what actually happens inside a fermenting pile of tobacco, the temperature thresholds that govern it, and why fermentation matters more to a cigar's character than almost anything else.
Reading Box Codes and Provenance
Learn to date a Cuban box from its stamps, understand the historical cipher systems, and deal honestly with the fact that most non-Cuban boxes carry no decodable date at all.
Long-Term Aging: What Changes and What Does Not
Learn what aging actually does to a cigar over years, which blends reward it and which do not, and how to run an aging program you can evaluate rather than hope about.
Pairing Methodology
Learn a repeatable method for pairing cigars with drinks based on weight, sweetness and structure, rather than matching flavor words, and how to test a pairing properly.
Blind Tasting Protocol
Learn to run a blind cigar tasting that produces trustworthy results, including how to band-strip without damage, control variables, and score in a way that survives scrutiny.
Authenticating Cuban Cigars
Learn the layered system of Cuban authentication marks, the physical tells that counterfeiters rarely get right, and why sourcing beats forensics every time.
Vintage and Pre-Embargo Cigars
Learn what pre-embargo actually means, how the vintage Cuban market is structured, and how to assess a decades-old cigar without romanticizing it.
Building a Cellar: Capacity, Rotation, Inventory
Learn to size a cellar to your actual consumption, choose between cabinet, coolerdor and climate-controlled storage, and run an inventory system that survives a decade.
Box Formats and Why They Matter
Learn the traditional box types, what dress boxes and cabinet selections actually signify, and how format affects aging, value and the way a box is read at resale.
Auction and Secondary Market Literacy
Learn how cigar auctions actually price, what the fees really total, how to read a lot description critically, and how to avoid the specific failure modes of the secondary market.
Beetles, Disasters and Insurance
Learn how tobacco beetles behave, the staged freezing protocol that kills every life stage, how to handle mold and dryness disasters, and how to actually insure a collection.
The Taino Origins of Tobacco
Learn where tobacco use actually began, what it meant to the Taino people who cultivated and ritualized it centuries before Columbus arrived, and how much of the word "cigar" itself does and doesn't come from that history.