I'll try that one...Here's more information about the culebra, and briefly talks about at the end of the "story" of the three cigars/one culebra a day to a torcedor...Sounds like it may be untrue...I have no idea...Taken from Cigars Limited/Hunter and Frankau, London: "Culebras in Spanish means snakes. It comprises of three cigars twisted together tightly in a spiral fashion. It first appeared in the Philippines circa mid-Nineteenth Century. That is probably why almost all major Philippine’s cigar manufacturers are still producing them. It was created based on the theory that a thicker cigar can mature better. The culebras were designed to enable a small ring gauge cigar to mature as well as a thick ring gauge cigar.
The culebras is considered by the Philippine’s cigar industry as a form of packaging rather than an individual size. That is why Perelman’s Pocket Cyclopedia of Cigars failed to obtain one single entry from the Philippine’s cigar manufacturers.
This form of packaging slowly spread to the cigar industries in other countries. The Cubans were never keen to buy this theory and so very few culebras were manufactured. The Cubans treated them as a ‘gimmick’ rather than for a useful purpose. They never took them seriously and all post-Revolutionary made ones were machine mades. The Caney, H. Upmann, Hoyo, Romeos, and Partagas were the only factories which had produced them. They are all extremely rare. At the moment, the only brand which still makes them (in very limited quantities) is the Partagas.
They are just ordinary machine mades and you should not expect to taste anything particular. They are not designed to be anyway.
They should be smoked one at a time. But for some people who have a big mouth and enjoy brandishing all three in the same big mouth, why not smoke all three at the same time? They are made for ‘fun’ anyway. This practice can now be officially declared as not ‘ridiculous’ . In the semi-official Cuban book ‘Epicure Guide to the Habano’ by Jose Ilario (Epicur Publicaciones S.L. 1999), the entry on Partagas Culebras reads like this : “Do not worry about them being plaided together, you will be surprised how well they draw and at their excellent combustion. The very daring may also smoke the three at the same time.”
It is also interesting that in recent years a very popular ‘story’ goes around about the culebras like this : “In the old days cigar rollers were only rationed three small cigars a day for personal consumption. To prevent rollers stealing the cigars they rolled for smoking, one culebra was rationed to a roller per day. As the cigars were twisted, rollers who stole their productions for smoking would be easily spotted.” The maker of this story seemed to have overlooked the fact that a cigar roller can twist their cigars they make into any form they like. This story is just a kind of the many psuedo-intellects ‘discovered’ during the American ‘cigar boom’ of the ‘90s."
