im juss simmerin

I'm kinda slow........so please explain this to me.

Is NC tobacco inferior?

Is NC tobacco already aged to the point where any additional time doesn't matter?

I ask, because from my limited experience, I've absolutely found, stored, aged, and smoked NC cigars, that were much better at 3, 4 and 5+ years, than they were at 1 year, or less.

Anyway, maybe gerbs, or another smart guy will explain production more. I suspect that quality NC filler and wrapper is typically aged longer than Cuban tobacco....and maybe that would explain what I think I've experienced.

My 3¢

c3s

As far as I know, there's nothing magical or excessively special about Cuban tobacco, versus Nicaraguan, Honduran, Dominican, etc. tobaccos. Just different geographic areas, soils and climate. The plant, while having several strains of course, is basically the same thing. Tobacco grown in Cuba doesn't magically get hugely more benefit out of aging than does tobacco grown in any other nearby country.

Here's what I suspect gets people confused: In general, Cuba, having that famous commie Q.C. or lack thereof, is more likely to ship super-young product. Non-Cuban stuff is capitalist-made and has better Q.C., so is more likely to do more pre-ship aging than the Cuban stuff gets.

Theoretical example time! Let's say a certain Cuban cigar gets no aging before shipping, and a certain non-Cuban cigar gets, say, 24 months of aging before shipping.

Remember that in general, aging's benefits are a diminishing-return phenomenon, meaning usually the earlier years produce far more improvement than the later years do.

Putting this all together, and ignoring distribution/shipping times for simplicity:

The Cuban cigars get in customer hands after 0 months. Customers smoke one immediately, then age them for 2 years and then smoke some then and say, "Wow, 2 years of age has made this Cuban FAR better than when it was new! Clearly, aging REALLY helps Cuban cigars!"

The non-Cuban cigars get in customer hands after 24 months. Customers smoke one immediately, then age them for 2 years and then smoke some then and say, "Well, this is better than when I got it 2 years ago, but not nearly as much better as the Cuban became during that same 2 year wait! Clearly, aging doesn't really help non-Cuban cigars as much!"

The critical point is: although to the customer it seems like both these experiments are testing the amount of improvement between 0 and 2 years, in reality only the former (Cuban) is testing that. The latter (non-Cuban) is actually testing improvements between the 2 and 4 year mark instead.

Usually, the noticeable improvements between the 0 and 2 year mark will be far greater than those between the 2 and 4 year mark.

I believe this is the origin of the widespread misconception that "Aging helps Cubans, but it doesn't really help non-Cubans"

Aging helps both equally, it's just that with Cubans, you're doing what the factory should've already done, and the largest improvements happen in that initial timespan.

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I don't think there are any absolutes, at least none that I have experienced. I've had NC cigars that are exactly as you describe and others that do improve. I've had Cuban cigars that improved, and Cuban cigars that lost their luster.

Aging tobacco is a big investment in product, storage and is still a gamble. Something could go wrong in the process, it could be ravaged by insects / rodents, the warehouse could burn down... How many barns of tobacco did Fuente lose last year to fire? 8 or 10? Huge ones too.

Not all tobacco is worth the investment. Some of the lower cost, lower margin cigars don't get much pre-aging on their tobacco. 6 months, maybe a year. 1-1/2 to 2 for the wrapper leaf. The cigar is rolled, stored for 60-90 days for the added extra moisture needed for the rolling process to dissipate, then it's banded, boxed/bundled, crated and shipped. Obviously cigars like that have the highest likelihood of changing.

Cuban cigars used to be that way, a few still are. Cuba has been moving more towards using aged tobacco in recent years. Most of the more famous / globally known marques are using it. Habanos is very secretive, they aren't saying how much age, I've heard 2-3 years, maybe a bit longer for Capa leaves. How accurate is that information I can't say, but I can say that I've had a lot of fresh stuff over the past few years that is all very smokeable.

Very few finished cigars are stored for long periods at the manufacturer, in any country. This is just sitting on potential revenue and risking loss. There are some, but it's a small percentage.

Something else to remember about NC cigars is that almost none use date codes, so it's hard to say how long that cigar has been sitting at the distributor / retailer. That NC cigar we think of as fresh because climate controlled warehouse storage is different than humidors, might actually have sat for 2-3 years. I've been able to knowingly experience this first hand a number of times with JR Ultimates as their boxes are hand dated in pencil when packed. I've gotten 3 year old boxes before, but, if that marking wasn't there, I wouldn't have known. Unlike an overseas order, where everything has a date on it.

So, maybe you have a situation where your cigar is made with 2-3 year old tobacco, then the box sits at the distributor for another 2 years. That's 5 years before you get it, this could possibly explain of what you, me and a few others have experienced with NC stuff not taking well to additional aging.

And, just like wine, some tobacco / blends doesn't age well. It peaks, some earlier than others. I think this is exists in every growing region in every country. No different than wine.

Don't know if that helps or makes it even more confusing, but it's what I typed.

I only have, and smoke, non-Cuban cigars, so I have no personal experience with Cuban cigars, just things I've read and heard from other people. So the rest of this post (and all my posts relating personal experience) refers only to non-Cubans.

I've had many that were "meh" at 3 years but great to amazing at 5+ years. Also, I've never experienced one that "diminished" after any span of time, no matter how long. The strength and pepper often decreases somewhat, but generally not hugely so, and the payback is usually a great increase in richness and complexity of "married-ness" of the flavors, which more than makes up for the modest loss of strength/pepper. What happens as time goes on, in my experience, is that this improvement process keeps happening but at an ever-slower rate (diminishing returns), but I've never seen a "step backward" in overall quality at any age.

So, your experiences don't match mine. I think palate differences explain most, if not all, of it. It's very interesting! All you folks out there, you might have a Pudding Mittens palate or a dstieger palate, or another palate entirely. It's up to you to figure it out with personal experimentation! Nobody can tell you hard-and-fast rules that are guaranteed to apply to your particular palate.

I'm sure that explains a lot of it, at least, if not all.

These differences in experience are part of what makes the hobby so interesting!

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Kicking myself for not grabbing the MC3 Roxxos recently for 69.95, free hat, free ship.

I won’t make that mistake again...

i like 10 year old ccs a lot more on average than i do 10 year old ncs as the latter are more likely to be air bombs imo. in truth, i have quite a few boxes of ncs that were very enjoyable 3-4 years ago (and i even kept tasting notes on) that now are muted at best.

i never appreciated the difference until i smoked more ccs and especially aged ccs. im sure many members here have more expertise than me.

the point about production pressure on the small island and rushing cigars to market is most likely true.

The more I read the experiences and opinions of other cigar guys about this, the more I suspect that the ability to detect strength/pepper/body is probably almost universal, whereas the ability to detect the complexity and "married-ness" of flavors produced by aging (hereafter referred to as "that other stuff") is more rare.

If you CAN detect that other stuff, your brain defines "quality" as strength/pepper/body AND that other stuff, so you experience what I do: aged NCs lose some strength but gain more of that other stuff, so overall they never "lose quality".

If you CANNOT detect that other stuff, your brain definies "quality" mostly as just strength/pepper/body, so you experience what some of you other guys do: aged NCs "lose quality" and become "muted" or "airballs", because you can only detect what they've lost, and can't detect what they've gained.

Just a theory, but it seems to fit.

No, I'm not saying anyone's palate is inferior to mine, just different.

An analogy would be if Guy A has normal color vision, and Guy B was born without photoreceptors in his eyes for the color red. If we take a dark room and turn on a blue floodlight, both guys will say the room is lit and they can see things fine. If the blue floodlight is then faded out as a red floodlight is faded in, Guy A will say that the nature of the room's illumination has changed but it hasn't lost any overall brightness, while Guy B will say the brightness level decreased down to zero and now it's totally dark.

Different sensory hardware, different experiences.

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Those have aged quite well imo.........wonderful Corojo flavor, with other floral notes and some spice bouncing in and out.

I’m glad I grabbed 3 boxes.

On the other hand, they might have been better in 2010....I’ll never know...

you need to get your hands on some ccs of various ages and see for yourself

the changes on some are really mind blowing

experiencing said things is certainly more valuable than reading some fat guy's opinion about it online

at least it was for me

and on that note, feel free to ignore this tiger's opinion as well [gonzo]

i have been the lucky recipient of a few of those from various botl (had one labeled as 2006 a couple days ago) and they are still very pleasurable indeed.