Expert: James Yee - 11/11/2008

Question
Hi James,

Two questions....
1. Where can i get good spanish cedar for my humidor I am making?
2. what do you consider a machine made store style cigar?  When the websites online say handrolled are they really?


Answer
Hi Sean,

Spanish cedar is usually available at most lumber yards that carry a wide range of domestic and exotic woods for indoor and outdoor construction.  Spanish cedar may also be available for sale at large hardware chains that sells wood for home construction. (Home Depot for example.)  When buying cedar for your humidor, be sure to double check that it is indeed Spanish cedar and not any other type of cedar wood.  Other cedars (American Red Cedar for example) can be extremely pungent which can permanently ruin your cigars' natural scent.

Machine-made cigars are generally the very inexpensive cigars that you would find in cigar stores and/or convenience stores.  They're usually wrapped in cellophane and are priced much lower than premium cigars.  These cigars are completely made by machines and usually small in size and ring gauge.  Some extremely inexpensive machine-made cigars are also recognizable by their plastic or paper packaging instead of being packaged in genuine cedar cigar boxes like premium cigars.  

Some well-known machinemade (MM) cigar brands include Century Sam, Backwoods, Tueros, White Owl and Bances.

Premium cigar brands that offer large, moderate to high-priced cigars are usually handmade and higher priced.  There are also machine-made but hand-finished (MM/HF) cigars and these are cigars that are partially made by machine but require human hands to apply delicate features to the cigar such as applying the cap or adhering the wrapper seam.  Many premium cigar brands also produce "MM/HF" cigars and market them as a lower-price, lower-end product line.

Another difference between handmade and machine-made cigars is the quality.  Handmade cigars generally contain long filler tobacco whereas machine-made cigars use short-filler tobacco.  Short-filler tobacco results in a more fragile, crumbly ash while long-filler can be firm and solid.  Premium handmade cigars also use a higher grade of tobacco whereas machine-made cigars may use a lower grade of tobacco and/or use tobacco "scraps" in their filler.

When buying cigars through mailorder, many retailers will specify whether or not the cigars are handmade or machine-made.  Many retailers will also use these notes when listing their cigars in catalogs or on their websites:

HM = Handmade
MM = Machine-made
MM/HF = Machine-made, Hand-Finished

For Cuban cigars, these three levels of production are often referred to as:

Totalmente a Mano = Handmade
Mecanizado = Machine-made
Hecho a Mano = Machine-made, Hand-finished

Hopes this answers your questions.  If you have any more questions, please feel free to just ask and I will be happy to help.

Regards,
James