Professor marc’s cigar college
While I’m always happy to share my voluminous knowledge on cigars with you, the best learning comes from discovering for yourself. Here are some of my favorite links for those wishing to enroll in Cigars 101.
Gary Manelski writes a cigar blog for About.com (hey, I’m not afraid of a little competition), and has a nice wide-ranging set
of topics of interest to novices and aficionados alike.
Every serious Brother/Sister of the Leaf should have a copy of Perelman’s, whose author runs a pretty serious cigar site. Here's his take on what it takes to take you from start to finish.The Internet Cigar Group is an omni-topic cigar site.
CigarNexus might be dead, but its cigar storage page lives on.
Among other things, CigarAdvisor serves to educate. Here’s their Cigars 101.
JR University, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of JRCigars.com
Cheap Humidors “dot com” is a great place for finding cigar accessories, and they also offer you a nice cigar primer.
Dr. Marc’s Cigar Health Clinic
Will smoking cigars kill you? If you inhale a dozen a day, yep, there’s a pretty good chance they will. Pretty much anything that’s not used in moderation can bump you off. This is why you need to educate yourself and make informed decisions.
I tell my family that averaging less than one a day and not inhaling poses no significant risk to my health. Here, read this doctor’s assessment (or the longer version) or the government’s own research (warning: very large Acrobat file). There’s also this and this about second-hand smoke, and other fun things about cigars. Oh, and don’t forget to look here. Hey, did you know that the government lies to you?
What about the claims that tobacco use runs up health care costs, and therefore should be abolished, heavily taxed, or heavily taxed into oblivion? First off, that’s mostly about cigarette smoking. The truth, though, is that smokers don’t cost society any more than non-smokers. Yes, they develop certain “expensive” diseases more than non-smokers, but they also die earlier. Thus, their total consumption of health care is about the same as non-smokers. Non-smokers have to die of something, eventually, which gets really expensive during their final two years on this planet.
Cigar Weekly wants you to get a balanced set of info, and let you decide for yourself.
Note: While my son knows that I enjoy smoking cigars, I neither smoke around him nor allow him to be in close proximity to cigar smoke. There are a lot of things that young lungs (he’s 8) should not be inhaling, including tobacco smoke.
Make My day
Most cigar brands are owned by two companies, Altadis and General Cigar.
Here’s a list of most of the other big players:
CIGAR FAMILY (Fuente, Cuesta-Rey, La Unica, DiamCrn)
drew estate - incl. Natural, Acid, Mayorga