Humidors aren’t more than the sum of their parts and selecting the best wood for your cigar storage container is paramount to the life of your cigars. The reason for this is that the kind of wood used for your storage box will directly determine the amount of moisture that’s contained or repelled inside it. And as any seasoned cigar aficionado knows, too much or too little humidity can easily ruin a priceless collection. Even if the humidor isn’t quite so shoddy as to ruin your cigars outright, a overabundance or lack of moisture can drastically alter flavor, often killing it outright.
High quality humidors are meant to keep cigars at the most stable humidity conditions (generally this is 68 F to 72 F) and are generally crafted from hard woods. The most commonly used for commercial humidors are Spanish cedar and mahogany. This is due to Spanish cedars propensity for maintaining a large quantity of moisture which’ll keep your cigars in peak condition, holding in the flavor and preventing crumbling. It also has a very unique and appealing aroma which will eventually seeping into your cigar collection provided that the cigars are allowed to sit in the humidor for a extended period of time. This is the main reason (aside from those of general aesthetics – it’s a very lustrous and beautiful looking wood) that many high grade cigars are sold, pre-wrapped in Spanish cedar folding.
Also, tobacco beetles, dreaded the arch nemesis of any sizable cigar collection, have a marked aversion to Spanish cedar. The tobacco beetle (Lasioderma serricorne) is so named due to it’s propensity for seeking out, nesting in and eating tobacco. They’ll also lay their eggs in sufficiently large deposits of tobacco which can, given time, lead to a infestation (this is the primary reason that humidors should never go above 72 humidity, since then it’ll be far more likely for tobacco beetles you didn’t even know you had to hatch in your humidor). As you can now see, having a humidor with built in protection from the beetles is a huge plus!
Lastly, Spanish cedar’s very resilient to warping and bending, which’s a common occurrence in other humidors made of a lesser grade product (typically weaker wood). So not only will a finely crafted Spanish cedar humidor protect your cigars, it’ll also protect itself.