Webmost, how do the cigars draw? Are they consistent?
They draw and burn perfectly. I have had machine made cigars from JC Newman which shed teensybits of almostdust in your mouth, which would consequently plug up and die. They were obviously made from sweepings. That's why I gave up my favorite Factory Throwout Sungrown... which I really loved. So I can see the argument in favor of full length leaves. But when the tobacco is cut in sizeable flakes, and the machinery is properly calibrated, then there is no burn problem at all. I get more frequent burn probs from expensive hand rolled premiums guys have sent me, and that's the truth. Here in Dull-Aware, we get loads of rainy summer evenings when an eight or ten buck cigar is apt to plug up, tunnel, or canoe. More times than I can count, I have gotten disgusted with trimming and re-lighting a premium cigar, tossed it, and pulled out a Smithdale to finish the session with no hassle.
On the flip side, when the machinery is properly calibrated, the machine made cigar feels looser than would a hand rolled full length entubado. Hand rolled can be hard as a poker and still draw free. A hard machine made will not. Consequently, you don't get as long a smoke as you do with the hand made.
My ideal cigar would be robusto size, 50 or 48 gauge, with a punched head to make it draw without cutting, with a tapered foot to make it light easily, with a cellophane sleeve which has the name printed on it like the Tuscorora does, with a pull tab to remove the cello, like the White Orchids do, with no band to have to peel off.
As much as I love the machine and the design I'd still take an 'Entubado rolled' hand made cigar any day. I don't agree that the artisan hand rollers are trying to emulate the machine rolled cigar but rather it's the machine that's trying to reproduce the result of a beautiful cigar from the hands of a skilled roller. The artisan rollers produced a beautiful cigar far before the machine was invented. The machine comes close but no cigar!
How much machine like consistency was there in the hand made cigars an ordinary Joe smoked before machinery? Do we know?
Look, I don't buy the artisan versus machinery argument one whit. That argument was definitively settled a century and more ago. My motorcycles are made by machine, my shirt is sewn by machine, this keyboard here is made by machine. I could not afford any of the above made by hand. I could not afford one handful of screws forged and threaded by hand; nor would your screw be apt to fit my nut. Consistency is inherent to machinery but alien to human hands. One hand sewn shirt would cost a fortune even from a sweat shop, and it would take 25 years practice to get the stitches anywhere near as even as a cheap Singer will do right out of the box. While it's true that shirts have been made by hand since ancient times, it's also nonsense to think one hand sewn shirt is more comfy than a closet full of machine knit Henleys at the same price. The King and his Earls prolly had some excellent hand sewn shirts; the peasant not so much. Now anybody can have an excellent shirt. Don't judge the machine product without factoring in how much product the machine produces. Machinery is a good thing. Cottage industry thru rose colored glasses be damned.
Heck, Gladys used to run a switchboard by hand to put you on a party line. Now we hit this forum courtesy of software run by machine. Could we have better discussion sitting in a pub over a home brewed pint and a fine hand rolled lonsdale? Sure. Once a year, if we each trekked 700 miles to meet in the middle. But... Not today.
Unless you are rolling the cigar yourself. That's a game changer. Then t experience of immersing yourself to the elbows in fine leaf satisfies as much as the smoke does.
