- Joined
- Mar 27, 2016
- Messages
- 532
Two points... If you want a dark wrapper you can stove the leaf in your home oven. Moisten the leaf and wrap in aluminium foil and bake at 220 for 2 hours and 20 minutes. You can get it almost black.
Many of the commercial sticks are dyed to a dark uniform color.
Secondly, there's the old discussion about how much does the wrapper influence the overall flavor. I'm in agreement with Don Pepin who says it's less than 25/30%. Others will disagree. The appearance of a maduro wrapper looks much richer to the eye and can implant a mental perception. Blind tasting in a dark room may yield surprising results.
If you carefully remove the wrapper from your favorite 'high end' commercial cigar and put it on your home roll tobacco would it really transform the cigar into a new amazing stick? I'm sure for some the perception would be greatly improved. The thin, small percentage of leaf is the only part of the cigar that's visible. This 'eye appeal' is very important in the cigar industry. The wrapper, the label, the box is all there to influence the perception.
Soooooo....
I agree 100% about the retail blends ... in addition to staining or cheat fermentation that the wrappers are 1. Excessively stretched ... nearly to a fault. 2. Using only a fraction of one wrapper per blend in order to get more sticks per leaf. 3. Applied after shrinkage leaving minimal room for expansion and contraction repeats which occur in commute and with humidor acclaimations. All these present high risk to resting damage and smoke damage... especially with rgs abouve 50... they also directly impact the flavor as our 1ply is their 1/2ply. So putting theirs on ours may not improve ours at all. 4. Adding oils for additional glare
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