Volado: what's the deal?

[waikikigun]

So volado leaves seem to be used in blends, e.g. as demo'd here in the graphic posted by MarcL:

http://fairtradetobacco.com/threads...?highlight=my+dominican+filler+leaf+selection

In that same thread fmGrowit says:

'I've dealt with some of the biggest cigar tobacco suppliers in the world and none of them sell a long filler grade called "Volado". '

So:

1) Is it really the situation that factories can get usable volado from their supplier farms but for some reason hobbiest rollers cannot? The farms won't sell usable volado to guys like WLT, etc.? And so we cannot attempt to replicate those blending formulas, but must always roll our blends tilting stronger/higher?

2) Or do people find lighter leaves among their purchased batches of seco and use those to fill the volado roll in their blend? Is it really the same? Or are the pros rolling stuff with lower/softer primings that we simply cannot accurately attempt to duplicate? If volado is "for combustibility" are we just supposed to have worse combustibility than a Cuban puro in our homebrewed sticks?

3) If you guys attempt to model a blend after these charts, do you just "shift the whole thing upward" and use seco/viso/ligero instead of volado/seco/ligero?

Thanks for your input.

 

[deluxestogie]

"Volado" makes it sound exotic, romantic. Here in the US, that grade of leaf is known as "flyers and trash." It's generally very low grade leaf (from the bottom of the stalk) that just happens to burn well. It contributes little else to a cigar. Most of it goes into filter cigarette production, where the quality of leaf is not as critical as it is for unfiltered cigarettes.

If you grow your own tobacco, you can produce some much higher quality bottom leaf, just by taking care with it.

As for blending from WLT leaf, every bale of the very same leaf is slightly different. It's an agricultural product that's highly dependent on the variations in weather from season to season, not to mention from one finca to the next. So a specific blend cannot be a fixed, unchanging combination of named product. You have to tinker with it. For filling the role of volado, just select the thinnest and lightest colored leaf from your seco. Call it volado, and fly with it.

Bob

 

[waikikigun]

Thank you, Bob.

And nice double entendre.

 

[RUNSUPRIVER]

Deluxe's view seems legit. From the Seco's and Volados I've seen, The Volado just needed to be much less expensive. I'm probably just going to use more Seco and less Volado from here on out.