What Makes a Premium Cigar? The MBFUMA Guide to Quality

There is a moment every cigar smoker remembers. The first time they lit something truly premium and understood, without explanation, that what they were smoking was different. Not just in price. Not just in packaging. In everything. The truest form of love for tobacco is the enjoyment of a perfect cigar.

That moment is what MBFUMA desires every time we blend, construct, package, and ship. If you know cigars, welcome, maybe you'll pick up on a few insights you didn't previously know. But if you are just finding your way into the world of premium cigars, this guide is a great read for you. No condescension. No gatekeeping. Just the truth about what separates a great cigar from everything else on the shelf.

It starts with the leaf

Everything in a premium cigar begins with tobacco. Specifically, it begins with where that tobacco is grown, how it is cultivated, and how long it is allowed to age before it ever reaches a roller's hands. Between these steps are cleaning processes and tries of fermentation, shifts and movement of the tobacco in the stage and the environment, cause, and how that tobacco is bailed and stored.

Premium cigars are made from long filler tobacco, whole leaves that run the full length of the cigar. This is in direct contrast to short filler, or mixed filler cigars, which use torn pieces or scraps and byproducts of the tobacco production process - this doesn't necessarily mean the short-filler, or "cuban sandwich" style cigar is bad, it just doesn't share the entirety of the whole leaves and has a different build and structural integrity. Long filler burns cleaner, more evenly, and delivers a more complex and consistent flavor profile from the first third to the final draw.

The origin of the leaf matters enormously. Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Ecuador, and the Connecticut River Valley in the United States each produce tobacco with distinct characteristics shaped by their soil, altitude, humidity, and climate. At MBFUMA, our production is rooted in Nicaragua — a region widely regarded as producing some of the finest tobacco in the world, known for its rich, complex, and full-bodied character.

The Three Components of Every Cigar

Every hand rolled premium cigar is built from three distinct components, each playing a specific role in the final smoking experience:

The filler is the heart of the cigar, the innermost leaves that make up the bulk of the blend. The filler is where the majority of the flavor complexity lives, and master blenders spend years perfecting the combination of leaves, origins, and ages that make up a blend. The fillers are put together in a few methods by groups called Buncheros; in Nicaragua it is traditionally the men who put fillers together for a blend and bind the cigar for the molds and press.

The binder is the leaf that wraps around the filler bunch, holding it together and contributing its own flavor characteristics to the overall profile. A well selected binder adds body and helps regulate the burn. The binder leaf is prepared in a certain way that allows the wrapper, be it a thinner or thicker leaf, to not show-through any imperfections, separations, veins, etc from the binder leaf. The binder leaf also take a majority of the force from he shaping molds that are placed in presses to achieve the overall final shape and head of the cigar. 

The wrapper is the outermost leaf and arguably the most important single component of a premium cigar. It accounts for roughly 30-35% of the flavor, and frankly 100% of the appeal and aesthetic. This makes sense, since it is the first thing you see and touch. Premium wrappers are carefully selected for consistency in color, texture, and vein structure. They are sorted, prepared specially, and cared for in a less industrious way as the other tobacco leaves and are the final and most delicate process of the cigar. To achieve a flawless wrapper is one of the clearest indicators of a truly premium cigar.

Construction Is Everything

You can have the finest tobacco in the world and still produce a mediocre cigar if the construction is poor. Hand rolling is a skill that takes years and years to master. A properly constructed cigar draws effortlessly, burns evenly from light to finish, and holds its ash with confidence. It also must have the perfect hand feel and resistance, and should act as an extension of the smokers hand.

When you pick up a premium cigar, give it a gentle squeeze along its length. It should be firm but with a slight give, and that resistance should be consistent from cap to foot.Soft spots or hard pockets may not mean a cigar is completely poor in quality, but it informs smokers of potential burn issues with runs, possible temperature changes due to more or less air-flow in a certain area (which drastically changes the flavor profile). A soft spot indicates a gap in the filler that will cause an uneven burn. Generally, a hard spot suggests an overpacked section that will restrict your draw.

The cap, the closed end atop of the head which smokers cut before smoking, should be smooth, cleanly applied, and seamlessly integrated with the wrapper. Sloppy caps are a telltale sign of rushed construction and can really be a red flag for what lies ahead. If you're new to cigars, don't necessarily ship away from what appears to be a possible cap or head flaw, this could be a style of a cigar or a trait of a certain type of wrapper that may be quite thick.

Aging and Fermentation

Premium tobacco goes through an extensive fermentation and aging process before it is ever rolled into a cigar. Fermentation removes harsh ammonia compounds from the leaf, smoothing the flavor and reducing bitterness. The longer and more carefully this process is managed, the more refined and complex the final smoke. Tobacco, once ready for production, can still be aged to increase its worth or quality, tat is depending on the leaf or kind.

After rolling, premium cigars are often aged further in aging rooms, sometimes lined with cedar, for months, sometimes for years. This resting period allows the three components of the cigar to marry together, blending their individual flavor contributions into a unified, cohesive smoking experience. Aging is also a key way to slowly mitigate any increase or decreases on moisture or "youth" in the tobacco or cigar, evening out not just a marriage of flavors but reducing the cigars volatility or margin of error. A cigar that has been properly aged smokes with a smoothness and complexity that a rushed product simply cannot replicate.

The Role of the Blend

Master blending is one of the most sophisticated and underappreciated arts in the cigar world. A master blender selects tobaccos from different regions, different years, and different priming levels (the position on the plant where the leaf was harvested) and combines them in precise ratios to achieve a specific flavor profile. This isn't alone all about the magic of taste, true master blenders and blenders in general understand that leaves have certain character traits that can assist or carry other complex features of tobacco. Some of these are thickness and burn rate. It gets ever more complex, Lets say a blender has a very strong leaf and the blend calls for that strength, but with that strength comes too high of a burn-heat, or maybe some overpowering flavors that hide the tru profile of the tobacco. Well, a blender could know to use a leaf that isn't so desirable or impressive only because its qualities complement the areas needed from the strong leaf while reducing the volatility of that leafs other features.

Tobacco plant anatomy changes by country and even generation. Here is the Nicaraguan general rule of tobacco plant anatomy: Leaves from the top of the plant, known as ligero, are the strongest and slowest burning. Leaves in between lager and the middle, known as Viso, are known for body, aroma and flavor and burn very evenly. Leaves from the middle, seco, contribute body and combustion. Leaves from the bottom, volado, burn easily and help with draw. A skilled blender uses mainly ligero, viso, and seco in harmony to create a cigar that is balanced, complex, and consistent from one cigar to the next.

What Premium Actually Costs & Why

A truly premium cigar requires premium tobacco, skilled labor, time, and attention at every stage of production. When you pay for a premium cigar you are paying for years of agricultural expertise, months of fermentation and aging, the hands of a skilled roller who may spend a decade mastering their craft, and the vision of a blender who spent years developing the profile you are about to enjoy. In addition, companies put masterly art and design behind dressing the cigar, most importantly found in the cigar rings and the boxes used. These are stored, packaged, shipped, and then must be re-stored and re-acclimated after a long sea voyage or air shipment. Manufacturers with locations in large marketplaces like the United States of America or Germany, must also care in many similar ways for the packaged and ready to sell product between the time they receive it and the time they sell it, be it immediately or if the product sits in a cigar warehouse for an extended period of time.

That price you pay is not a true markup, it is a reflection of what it actually takes to put something extraordinary in your hand. Generally, the cost of one cigar, be it with or without taxation from the overreaching governments who constantly attack smokers and smoking, is generally cheap. In what other area of non-commodity purchase can you spend $10-$20 and have a calming, relaxing, unbothered 45 minutes to an hour or pure pleasure that starts beautiful and disappears among the natural elements of fire and air?

At MBFUMA, we believe that understanding what goes into a premium cigar makes every smoke more meaningful. Not because it needs to be complicated, but because when you know what you are holding, you hold it differently, you appreciate it differently.

The Bottom Line

A premium cigar is not defined by its price tag, its band, or its reputation. It is defined by the quality of its leaf, the skill of its construction, the integrity of its blend, and the experience it delivers from the moment you cut it to the moment you set it down. The ring, packaging, company style, marketing all play an important role and shouldn't be cast out in simply seeking the perfect cigar. We recommend trying many cigars, many company's expressions of premium.

We know when you try MBFUMA, you'll stick around. The standard we build every MBFUMA cigar to is a standard that is unwavering for us. And that is the standard we think every cigar smoker deserves to smoke. Explore the MBFUMA collection at www.mbfuma.com and find your next premium smoke.