very informitive,thanksOriginally Posted by 8-5-8
LONG-TERM STORAGE
Every so often, a stir goes through the cigar world, that several thousand pre-Castro Havana cigars are being sold at auction. Premier cigar purveyors like Alfred Dunhill, store clients' cigars in bulk for years, allowing them to age "like fine wine." The implication is that the older a cigar gets, the better it becomes.
Cuban cigar and tobacco people have told me, however, cigars have a shelf life of about one year, then decline irreversibly. They said, "No one in Cuba stores their cigars. They smoke them right away." Perhaps the American and British smoking gentry know something about cigars Cubans don't , but it seems unlikely. Be aware, also, that the Brits tend to favor drier cigars than most, too.
There is a scientific consideration that may shed light on this issue. Long-storage advocates would say that one could store cigars indefinitely as long as the humidity remains at a proper level (73%), so the cigars would not dry out.
But this is not correct, when one understands that cigar taste is not a matter only of whether the water content has evaporated. It depends upon whether the volatile aromatic oleoresins (the oils mentioned above) have evaporated. These are the saps, the resins which give the cigars their taste and aroma.
A little knowledge of the relative independence of partial vapor pressures with respect to each other's outgassing rates supports the theory that long-term storage is not always wise.
Even with humidity at a full 100%, creating a rain-forest environment for the cigars, the oleoresins will still dry out at the same rate as if the humidity were at desert-level! The evaporation rate for the oils depends solely upon the concentration level of those specific oleoresins in the container, independent of the level of water vapor. Unless the level of the tobacco oleoresins themselves remain at 100%, they will evaporate out of the tobacco. The cellophane that seals a cigar box will maintain this high humidity level for the aromatics for a few months. But after a while, the aromatics will be lost through tiny leaks and by passing through the cellophane membrane itself.
The answer to this paradox is that some cigars react favorably to aging, some do not. They may not actually taste better after aging, only different. With the loss of oils, they probably sacrifice richness for mellowed smoothness.
I can share a personal observation. I recently received a cedar box of double coronas that had been stored 15 years in a closet, without attention. After humidifying them gently for several days, I smoked them. They had sacrificed richness and full body for mild, mellow character. So my experience seems to confirm theory. Fanciers of aged cigars do recommend test-smoking a cigar every few months to determine if the stock is passing its peak.
Short-term conditions should be considered, too. Leave a cigar on the dashboard of a car, or on a table in the sun, and you've devastated it in less than an hour.
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I found this to be informative.
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