Five by Fifty - 5 Cigars

I’ll address it up front, because I’d be thinking it too: a box of nothing but robustos sounds like less. Less range, less variety, less to explore.

It’s the opposite. Every month until now, we’ve changed two things at once, the blend and the format, which means you’ve never had a clean read on either. This month, the size holds still. Five inches, fifty ring gauge, give or take. What’s left is the blend, and nothing but the blend. Different wrappers, different countries, different hands, tasted against each other without the vitola putting its thumb on the scale.

I love this size. Not as a compromise, but as a preference. I’ve smoked plenty of churchills and toros and left too much of them in the ashtray, half-finished because the evening moved on before the cigar did. A robusto respects your time. It gives you the full arc, the opening, the shift in the middle, the finish, in under an hour. And the proportions do something quietly important: with less filler to work through, the wrapper carries more of the flavor, and the wrapper is usually the most characteristic leaf in the blend. You’re tasting the part the blender chose most carefully. That’s why so many of them put their best work in this size. If a blend only comes one way, it’s usually this one.

And then there’s the holidays. Over the next few weeks a lot of us will be on porches and back patios with relatives and old friends, some of whom smoke twice a year. Hand someone like that a seven-inch cigar and you’ve given them a chore. Hand them a robusto and you’ve given them a conversation. It’s the most shareable format there is, which makes it the right one for the most shareable season.

Same size. Five different answers. Pass them around.
Jeff