Everything a new cigar smoker needs to know.
Short, practical guides written by our team. No fluff — just what you need to walk into any humidor with confidence.
10 things a cigar smoker should never do.
The unwritten rules of the cigar lounge — written down. Whether you're lighting your first stick or your thousandth, these are the habits that define a great smoke.
Read the guide →How to Cut a Cigar
A bad cut can ruin an otherwise perfect cigar — cracking the wrapper, causing an uneven draw, or unraveling the whole thing before you light it. The good news: it takes about thirty seconds to learn how to do it right, and you will never go back.
Read guide →How to Light a Cigar
Lighting a cigar is not the same as lighting a cigarette. Rush it and you will get a hot, bitter, uneven burn that dogs you for the entire smoke. Take two minutes to light it properly and the cigar rewards you with a cool, even draw from the very first puff.
Read guide →Understanding Cigar Strength
"Strength" is the word beginners reach for first, and it is also the one most commonly misunderstood. Strength is not the same as flavor complexity, harshness, or quality. Once you understand what it actually means — and how it differs from body — you will make much better choices when you walk into a humidor.
Read guide →Cigar Sizes & Vitolas
Walk into a humidor and you will see cigars that look almost identical labeled with completely different names — Robusto, Toro, Corona, Lancero. Size and shape affect smoke time, draw temperature, and how the blend expresses itself. Here is how to make sense of it all.
Read guide →Cigar Wrapper Colors Explained
The wrapper leaf is the first thing you see on any cigar — and one of the last things beginners think to pay attention to. Yet wrapper color is one of the fastest ways to predict flavor before you ever strike a match.
Read guide →How Terrain Shapes Cigar Flavor
A premium cigar starts in the field long before it reaches a humidor. While the blend, wrapper, binder, and filler all matter, the land where the tobacco is grown has a major influence on the final smoking experience. Soil, sunlight, rainfall, humidity, altitude, and temperature all shape how the tobacco plant develops — and that is why two cigars made from similar tobacco seeds can taste completely different when grown in different regions. In cigars, flavor is not created by the leaf alone. It is created by the relationship between the plant, the land, the climate, and the hands of the people who grow, cure, ferment, age, and blend it.
Read guide →Tobacco Leaf Positions Explained
A premium cigar is not simply tobacco rolled in tobacco. It is a carefully built blend of leaves selected from specific positions on the plant — each position producing leaf with different strength, flavor, aroma, and burn characteristics. Understanding leaf positions is one of the fastest ways to understand why cigars taste the way they do and why blenders make the choices they make.
Read guide →Ready to discover your palate?
CigarPalate — Reading about cigars gets you started. CigarPalate takes you further — it's a guided tasting app built for beginners that builds your flavor profile as you smoke, then suggests what to try next from a catalog of over 6,500 cigars.
- ◈Guided tasting by thirds — Walk through each stage of your smoke with a visual flavor wheel — no expertise required.
- ◈Plain-English translations — You say "sweet and woody" — CigarPalate translates it to the expert vocabulary for you.
- ◈Smarter recommendations every smoke — Your flavor profile lives in your humidor. The more you log, the more precisely it suggests what you'll love from 6,500+ cigars in the catalog.
- ◈Your personal humidor — Track what you've smoked, what you love, and what you want to try next — all tied to your taste profile.
Free to start · 1 guided tasting/mo & 5 humidor cigars included · Available in English & Español · Built by iThrive AI™
Come in and we'll walk you through it.
Reading about cigars only gets you so far. Visit the lounge and our staff will help you find the perfect first smoke.