Brief Anatomy of a CIgar

Cigars have a somewhat complex anatomy of their own, but here is a simple nitty-gritty version to get you started. On the outside you have the head, the part you cut, and the foot, the part you light. In terms of the tobacco that makes up the cigar you have the filler, the binder, and the wrapper.

The wrapper leaf is always the highest quality leaf on any premium cigar, becasue you know, you wan't the cigars to look very pretty and delicious. Wrapper leaf is probably the most closely watched and pampered leaf for tobacco farmers. They can come in a lot of different varieties from claro-claro (light green), natural or claro (tan-brown), corojo(brick red), maduro(dark brown), and oscuro (almost black). These are just a few of the often used names as there are almost 100 different wrapper classifications used in Cuba alone. Wrappers can also be shade grown (covered with cheese cloth) or sun grown (direct sun exposure) for varying strengths.

Most of the tobacco that makes up a cigar is called the filler. Cigars made with long filler (long supple leaves) are the best, and you also have short filler cigars (small short leaves, or leave clippings/left overs from long filler cigars), and mixed filler or cuban sandwich (a combo of long and short filler) cigars. Long filler cigars and mixed filler cigars are rolled by hand 99% of the time, while short filler cigars can either be machine made or hand made. Filler tobacco is made in a variety of tastes and strengths based on the tobacco farmers expertise and what the manufacturer is looking for.

The binder is very tough and pliable tobacco that holds the filler in place and keeps the cigar in the cylindrical shape. If you take a normal cigar and remove the wrapper, the rough and tough layer underneath of that is the binder. Binders also come in varying tastes and strengths.

A lot of people always ask the question, "how much of the cigars taste is influenced by the wrapper?" I've heard a lot of strange answers from people and even found some statistics in books. Just off the top of my head, one source said that 76% of the taste comes from the wrapper. This was without diving into the type of wrapper or tobacco or the cigars size.

Most of the cigars taste actually comes from the filler, which makes up the majority of the tobacco found in the cigar. However, through common sense and simple mathematics, the thinner the cigars the greater the wrapper surface area to filler volume ratio, so through common sense on thinner cigars the wrapper contributes much more to the flavor than thicker cigars.