Do hand-made cigars taste better?
The designation ‘hand-made’ says very little about the quality and taste of a cigar. A cigarmaker who uses inferior tobacco will, irrespective of his efforts, only be able to make an inferior cigar. The resonance of the term ‘hand-made’ is largely emotional. It summons up times gone by, when everything seemed better than it does now. Or at least, that’s what our emotions say. Reason tells us a quite different story. Mechanization has made the production of cigars by hand unnecessary – without sacrifycing quality. In fact, quality has remained a constant factor. Moreover, mechanization has made cigars affordable. One factor remains essential: the quality of the tobaccos used to make the cigar. The procurement and the blending into a fully-flavoured mixture remains the work of skilled individuals. And in this sense, every high-quality cigar is still hand-made.
