It has all started after the discovery of Americas as the sailors have picked up on the local Mayan tradition of tobacco smoking. Those cigars weren’t like modern ones, in fact, they were just leaves wrapped up in a specific way that they’d smoke. It’s not until early 19 century Spain that we’ve seen the ones like modern ones, with leaves dried up, chopped up and tied down in small form.
There’s a pretty big modern day debate going on in regarding smoking. Those that smoke are defending their right to do so and are getting more and more angry about having all of the additional fees and levies sprung on them, making it more expensive for them to enjoy their hobby, while the non-smokers argue that even if they do not smoke actively they’re still forced to inhale nicotine as secondary smokers. A very powerful lobby from the tobacco industry is just adding oil to fire, as it does what it can to keep the multi million dollar industry that spans across the entire globe active. It’s been even speculated that tobacco industries mix up other ingredients in their tobacco to make it more addictive.
There are some alternatives to smoking, but the active smokers who want to quit either do it cold turkey, or just push back a bit on their habit before they return to it all over again. With tons of different marks of cigars there’s a really wide range of products for smokers to pick from. Generally, cigars are divided into three groups, depending on their aroma and taste while inhaling – mild, medium or full bodied. Since this is a very subjective value to take while sorting a product, most cigars are rated “mild to medium” or “medium to full”, just to indicate their general flavour. The other forms of rating cigars is by size, length, shape, even shade for really high quality cigars.
Most of the world’s cigar supply comes from The Dominican Republic, a land where cigar production boomed right after Cuban embargo – the factories popped up like mushrooms literally overnight and it’s a number one source for hand crafted cigars. Even with the embargo still being active, the cigars from Cuba still have very high ratings, but Mexican hand made cigars, Honduras grown tobacco and cigars made on The Philippines also have a lot of support from all over world, but mostly Europe.