Blending cigar leaves

Cigar.com had this interesting article on blending cigar leaves. If you have not subscribed to their newsletter, you need to . It is always full of useful info(as well as selling cigars, of course).

While a blender will concoct his creations based on flavors stemming from certain plants grown from specified seeds in specified regions, determining the strength and intensity of the competing aromas in a complex cigar is an art in itself. A typical tobacco plant has roughly 18 usable leaves that are spread among 5 primings. From bottom to top, these primings are referred to as Volado, Seco, Viso, Ligero and Corona. To alter a cigar’s flavor intensity, blenders will mostly utilize the middle three primings. The strength of any particular tobacco is determined by the thickness of each leaf and this thickness is directly proportional to the amount of nutrients it receives from the soil and sun. For this reason, the leaves in the higher primings of the plant tend to have more texture and more flavor as they are exposed to more sunlight. Also, when the leaves are harvested they are picked from the bottom to the top over a two-week period. With the lower primings removed, more of the soil’s nutrients are funneled to the top of the plant where the leaves remain for a longer period of time. How does a blender utilize this process? It depends. If he wants to increase the strength of the entire blend, he may amp up all of the leaves (i.e. change all of the Seco tobacco to Viso, Ligero, etc). However, and most commonly, the blender will change the primings of only some of the tobaccos in an effort to balance the competing aromas. For example, if the sweet notes from a leaf of Cameroon are dominating the palate too much and overshadowing some of the other more subtle notes, a blender might change to a lower priming of the Cameroon (i.e. change from Ligero to Viso) or he might use higher primings from some of the other tobaccos to round out the blend. As you might imagine, blending quality cigars is more than just throwing together random leaves of tobacco. Narrowing the flavor profile of tobacco down to seed, country, region, farm and priming creates endless possibilities. For this reason, some of the world’s greatest potential blends have most likely not been discovered.