Lighting a cigar without cooking the first third
Heat the tobacco, do not burn it. The difference is about two centimetres of flame.
Hold the flame below the foot and let heat, not fire, do the work. Direct contact scorches the outer leaves, and scorched tobacco tastes of scorched tobacco for the next twenty minutes.
Which flame
- Cedar spill: the traditional answer, and genuinely the cleanest. Slow.
- Butane torch: fast and neutral. Powerful enough to burn the leaf if you rush it.
- Soft flame lighter: fine, as long as it is butane rather than fluid.
- Matches: only after the sulphur has burned off — several seconds.
Never a petrol lighter or a candle: both leave a taste that survives the first third.
The method
Hold the cigar at an angle, flame a centimetre or two below the foot, and rotate. Wait for the edge to glow evenly before you draw. Then draw gently while continuing to rotate, and check the foot: an even ring means you are done.
Do this: blow gently on the lit foot after the first few puffs. It shows you instantly whether the ember is even, and correcting a lopsided light in the first minute takes seconds — after ten minutes it takes the whole first third.
Why a bad light lingers
An uneven start becomes a canoe: one side burns ahead, the wrapper burns faster than the filler, and the cigar tastes hot and bitter long before the halfway mark. Almost every complaint about "the first third was harsh" is a lighting complaint.
The time it takes
Thirty to sixty seconds for a robusto. That feels long when somebody is waiting for you, and it is the single cheapest improvement available to anyone whose cigars have been disappointing lately.
Two sentences about how it started
The entry screen takes the cigar, a score out of ten and a note — enough room to write that it started uneven and never quite recovered. That line is what tells you, next time, whether to blame the box or the lighter.
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