Temperature Resistance

I often use the term "temperature resistance" when talking about the characteristics of a cigar. It occurred to me that no one has any idea of what that means, since I just made it up. The cigar world may already have a term for this, but since I'm used to calling it this, I'm going to stick with it.

Temperature resistance refers to how much a cigar's taste changes as you puff on it without rest, or more accurately, how much the taste changes as the cherry gets hotter.

When you pick up and puff on a stick that has sat for a minute or so, it has a certain set of flavors and tastes associated with it. Those flavors often change as you decrease the amount of time between puffs. Commonly, the flavors shift to peppers, harder leathers, and smoke. This is why many people recommend letting a cigar sit for a full minute or more between puffs.

Every cigar that I've had has both an innate and imparted temperature resistance. Innate TR is how the cigar will smoke & taste regardless of what you do it. Imparted TR is how the TR is affected by how moist a cigar is, how long it has "rested", the absolute age of a cigar, etc.

I've found over time cheap cigars are extremely temperature resistant. You can puff a Don Lugo like you're trying to rescue a drowning victim and the taste wont change at all, but many of your $6-plus cigars will fight you back. I've found Warlocks and Diesels to be particularly temperature sensitive, that is, having a low temperature resistance.

What does this mean? To most people, probably nothing. It's just something I notice while smoking so I record it. Just one more interesting variable between cigars!

---