Cigars and Alcohol

"A cigar numbs sorrow and fills the solitary hours with a million gracious images" - George Sand

Back in the days when one could smoke in a British pub, I lit up a cigar in a student's attempt to be mature, gentemanly, and debonair. The cigar was Hamlet, Britain's universal pub cigar made popular over the course of three decades by a series of ads with the catchphrase, "Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet," to the backdrop of Bach's Air on a G String. I felt like I should look a lot cooler than I actually did; instead, I stood by the bar with the thin cigar that wasn't much bigger than a cigarette, wondering how I was supposed to smoke a cigar properly.

As someone who doesn't smoke, I haven't since been much tempted to relive my student's Hamlet moment. In that time, smoking has become pariah - outlawed in offices, restaurants, and then pubs; even my smoker friends light up each cigarette with a detailed expression of guilt, followed by an equally detailed explanation of how they are going to quit as they politely blow smoke away from me.

Cigars, expensive and difficult, may seem an inevitable victim of the decline in smoking: if you can't have a quick fag over a pint, then what chance a cigar over a Cognac? It's certainly rare to see anyone smoke a cigar, but maybe this cultured, complex expression of tobacco is due a new appreciation.

In July, @kt_canfield translated for a group of Cuban sommeliers, who visited Napa and Sonoma equipped with suitcases of cigars and rum. They only just got through customs with them; Cuban products are permitted into the US but only as gifts - which is all those sommeliers were intending to do, as they distributed them liberally to all they met in wine country. Since then, we've smoked a couple of Cuban cigars, and I bought another from Sidestreet, a Napa store, from the Dominican Republic. We've experimented smoking the cigars with Pinot Noir, sherry, and rum, all of which have brought out the complexities of cigars and underlined the potential of cigar and alcohol pairings.

history and production

the smoking of cigars dates back to the European discovery in the sixteenth century of tobacco, and the practice of wrapping tobacco in dried leaves and smoking it; cigarettes originate from as late as the nineteenth century. Cuban cigars perhaps have the greatest renown, not least because they are unavailable in the United States, a country which has a long history of producing and smoking cigars. Tobacco is grown throughout Central America and the Carribbean, though many cigar maunfacturers are based in Europe - Germany and the Netherlands are the two biggest exporters.

Cigars come in various styles, shapes, sizes, and strengths. Perhaps the most important measurement is the width, which is called the ring gauge. The wider the cigar, the more flavour it imparts, although it can also burn out quicker. Measured by 64ths of an inch, gauge sizes range from 33-60. For instance, a toro cigar is 6in (15cm) long with a gauge of 50 - meaning 50 64ths of an inch (20mm) wide. The wrapping of the cigar comes from the widest part of the tobacco plant, the colour ranging from light (claro) to dark (oscuro). The cigar's complex flavours, though, come from fermenting, or slowly drying, the leaves which form the filler; the cigar should not be too dry, however, as a sweet complexity comes from the oils in the leaves.

the cigars

Habanos Trinidad

A cigar which rose to fame by its association with Fidel Castro - an association which turned out to be false. Its classic vitola (a cigar's shape and size) is a fundador, 7½ inches long with a gauge of 40. The cigar's aromas are subtle, delicate, but nevertheless quite pronounced, with a woody, earthy, spicy, herbal character.

Davidoff No.2
From a Ukranian producer based in Geneva, this cigar is a panatela, slightly shorter at 6 inches and narrower with a gauge of 38. Its flavours were smokier and less subtle, and the experience was more about the tobacco. A less complex cigar which benefitted from the pairings, especially the rum.

the pairings

with Senses Pinot Noir

The Cubans had insisted to @kt_canfield that cigars and Pinot Noir were a perfect match. I have to admit to a certain scepticism: light, delicate Pinot would surely be overwhelmed by the intense tobacco flavours of a cigar. The Cubans were right, though. This was a perfect match for the Cuban cigar in particular, the smoky nature of the wine soaking up the leafy, earthy cigar's intense complexity while being given a rich, spicy mouthfeel.

with sherry - El Maestro de Sierra Oloroso and PX

Back in February, I attended a run through of the range of Gonzalez Byass's sherries. Their rep, Paul Shepherd, introduced the Noë Pedro Ximénez sherry, a 30-year-old blend of Oloroso and Pedro Ximénez, as being, to his surprise, perfect with cigars. This was my first introduction to the possibilities of pairing cigars with wine, and I've been intrigued since. On this occasion, we paired the two cigars with a fifteen-year-old Oloroso and PX. The subtler, more nuanced cigar went well with the Oloroso, while the smokier cigar matched the sweet dried fruits of the PX. Both sherries were too young, however: I would love to repeat this experiment with a maturer, more leathery sherry.

with rum - Zacapa 23 años

This is one of the world's great drinks; as it's from Central America (Guatemala), it's also no surprise that it complemented the cigars perfectly. The sweet toffee spices filled the mouth at the same time the tobacco smoke softened the alcohol. This rum is deliciously drinkable, but the cigar slowed appreciation of it on a lingering warm evening. Two intense sets of flavours filling the mouth, yet settling together in easy balance.

Smoking a cigar takes time and proper consideration; it also requires the correct drink to go with it. It's an intense experience, full of long, rich flavours, leaving one a little light-headed. I'm not sure it's something I'd do often, as the drink has to be as complex as the cigar. But as a warm evening sets to a cool, starry darkness, I'm happy to linger on the smoke of a cigar and the spicy sweetness of a rum.

Rum

Ah, Ron. Another spirit that once upon a time I wouldn't have gone near but which I'm now extremely intrigued by, especially the dried fruit and sweet spice flavours of oaked dark rum.

Perceptions of rum are dominated by Bacardi, one of the biggest international spirits brands in the world (globally, it sells nearly 20m cases a year, second only to Smirnoff). I remember the ads from the '90s: a trendy, cool drink which meant guaranteed success with Latina women; such an ad inevitably led to ordering one in a bar, and, equally inevitably, vowing never to drink the stuff again. For an older crowd, though, rum means Navy Rum: bottles with drunken sailors on the front and only ever ordered by an old ruddy-cheeked, frantically stubbled man. Both these styles are image conscious, Bacardi the party spirit for good times (and, of course, to be drunk with coke), Navy or dark rum the drink of history and tradition. Neither image does much for rum, though.

this looked really cool in the 1990s

 

an ad for Lamb's Navy rum about the "True British Character" - featuring a Creative Branding Guru...

what's it made from?

It was probably Marco Polo who brought back sugar cane from Asia and it made its way to the Caribbean through the Spanish (by way of Christopher Columbus). By the seventeenth century, sugar cane was an even more valuable commodity than gold, so much so that it led to the development of the slave trade. Extracting sugar from the plant creates a residue of sticky sweet molasses, which planters distilled into spirit so as not to waste any material. By the eighteenth century, this spirit had become extremely fashionable in Britain - yet another spirit with a heavily colonial history.

Most rum is made from molasses, though it can also be made from sugar cane juice (particularly in the French islands Martinique and Guadaloupe, when it's called rhum agricole).

different styles

white rum - clear and colourless; if they receive any oak ageing, the colour is filtered out (which is how Bacardi has traditionally been made); flavours aren't particularly intense, though this depends on the desired style.
golden rum - the colour comes from time in oak (as well as some caramel for consistency), and the ageing results in a greater complexity.
dark rum - the different methods of distillation for rum lead to spirits of lighter and heavier intensity - a dark rum will be made from the most intensely flavoured spirits, while the dark colour comes from lots of time in oak. This prolonged maturation also allows the unripe, green cane flavours of the base spirit to develop into rich tropical fruits. The heat of the Caribbean plays an important part in maturation; a "tropical year" is eight months long, so a twelve-year-old rum is almost the equivalent of a twenty-year-old spirit from a cooler climate. This is the kind of stuff sailors used to drink in great quantities, and there's another style of dark rum - Navy Rum, which is even more aromatic and has caramel added to it to give it a burnt-treacle flavour.

where it's made

Most countries in the Caribbean produce rum, and often the base materials are shipped from one country to another - as long as the drink is made in a country capable of growing sugar cane it can be called rum. The major countries include Guyana, which uses Demerara sugar and produces a broad range of styles of rum due to the unusual wood pot stills used for distillation, Jamaica, where the variety of styles comes from the length of ferment, and Cuba, where the style of white rum originates.

Diploma tasting

Bacardi - my notes say vegetable and grassy, with green bananas and bubblegum. I'm not sure it even tasted of that much, but we have to write something for the tasting exam. We also need clues to help us spot which spirit is which when we do the exam, especially when they're this bland, so for a white rum we should be looking for tropical fruits such as underripe banana. These clues didn't help me for the mock blind tasting at the end of the day, as I thought this was a vodka (we were warned that it's easy to confuse white rum with tequila; I wish I'd made a mistake that obvious).

La Mauny Rhum Agricole - a much, much more interesting white rum. The clue is again green banana and grass (flavours you don't find in vodka), but there's also cinnamon, white pepper, melon, and smoke.

Appleton Estate 12YO - no confusing this with vodka, as it was mahogany coloured. The tropical fruits were much less ripe, with cedar and sherry aromas from the oak, and treacle, toffee, and fruitcake from the molasses. 

El Dorado 15YO  - another mahogany coloured rum, with lots of complex aromas. I've already talked about this, and Pusser's Navy Rum, in my initial blog about the Diploma spirits classes. These two rums were fantastic.

Wray & Nephew White Overproof Rum - I coped pretty well with tasting nearly forty spirits one after the other, by taking small sips that I thoroughly spat out. This, though, was 63% and the alcohol was immediately apparent before even pouring it from the bottle. On tasting, the aggressive alcohol did fade to reveal tropical fruit aromas, but the level of alcohol meant that there's no way this could ever be considered a complex drink. Quite amazing, though, to produce a drink of this quality with such high alcohol.

cachaça

We weren't given any cachaça to taste, but we were told that it may appear in the exam. Thanks for that. Cachaça is the second most drunk spirit in the world, after Shochu (an Asian spirit) - so there's more of it produced than vodka. Most of the production and consumption, though, is in Brazil, meaning that its importance is local (to a country of 200m people) - that's definitely changing and the international importance of cachaça is growing. It's made from sugar cane juice rather than molasses; this means it's technically no different from rum (particularly rhum agricole), but the Brazilian authorities have been campaigning to get international recognition of cachaça as a distinct product and last year, the US finally agreed to recognise cachaça as a separate category. Cachaça's the base ingredient in a caipirinha, which is how recognition of the spirit has been growing in the UK and elsewhere. I do have memories of drinking cachaça in Lisbon, but those memories are dim...