When blending the tobacco, the blender’s trying to tantalize the human palate! Therefore, a well-blended cigar should awaken all of the following taste experiences. It should taste sweet, sour, salty and a hint of bitter and umami! Umami is often described as a meat flavor on the human palate but can have other tastes as well.
You do all this by blending the sweet tobacco leaves with the harsh leaves and the bitter or sour leaf of the tobacco. Then finally using the umami flavoring, the cigar becomes a thing of pleasure while smoking from beginning to end. Tobacco blending is the art of learning what each tobacco tastes like individually then combining the tobacco leaves for the end result desired. Hence blending the best cigars people like and want to smoke.
One of the most popular cigar blenders if J Fuego who branched out on his own to create J Fuego Cigars. Smoker’s needs and wants is how he blends his creations. Different blends for different flavored cigars. For instance, one smoker may want a mild sweet blended cigar, and the next smoker may want a bold full tobacco taste with just a sweet hint. Blenders like J Fuego only use the best grown top quality tobacco leaves for all of their different blends.
Top quality tobacco leaves are more costly but produce a better blended cigar for the money. Blenders are always traveling to try new tobaccos, experiencing them to acclimate into the blends. The tobacco must be just dry enough but still moist enough to shape and form, then to let age for the right amount of time.
Blending then wrapping the cigar is done in a three stage process:
Stage 1: The Wrapper – This is what holds the final stage together. The reason it is mentioned first is because of the wrapper being an important part of the taste of the overall cigar.
Stage 2: The Filler or the Blended Leaves of the Tobacco – Several different types of tobacco leaves are combined and rolled up together. The filler is the inside of the cigar.
Final Stage: The Binder – This is usually a strong tobacco leaf that’s used to wrap the cigar and the last stage of the taste process. The wrapper is carefully wrapped around the filler to hold and shape the cigar before ageing process.
Blending cigars is truly and art form and takes years of trial and error to perfect.