How to age your Cuban Cigars

If you are a real cigar aficionado, you know that protecting your stogies in a humidor is the only way to protect and age them properly. If you don't have one, they are available in a lot of places and you can find a decent on on the internet too.

Handmade cigars (Like 97% of all Cuban cigars), although constructed with care, can't stand the fury that nature throws at them, especially extreme temperatures whether hot or cold, or even water damage from over humidification. Any of these conditions can ruin your perfect Cuban cigars.

Humidors not only protect your Cuban cigars, but also help 'ferment' the Cuban tobacco within them. Aged cigars are considered more valuable and unique, similar to wine, depending on how they are aged.

Did you know the Cuban tobacco used in Limited Edition Cohiba cigars is actually aged for 2 years before being rolled? Now that is some serious art! Some Cuban cigars have sold in auction at Sotheby's for upwards of $2000/cigar because of their rarity and aging.

If you are now convinced that you really need a humidor or a second one, let me stop you for just a few more minutes. After all, you don't want a humidor that you don't need. Now generally speaking, there are three species of humidors.

You have the portable humidor, the table humidor and the biggest of them all, the room humidor. The portable humidor is what I like to call 'On the go' humidor.These humidors are designed for the person who likes to smoke for 45 minutes maximum and than go to the next business meeting.

The unfortunate part is that you can only store about five to fifteen Cohibas at once. If you are more of a laid back person and would rather enjoy a fine Cuban cigar in the comfort of your own home, than you need to get yourself a table or desktop humidor.

Table humidors are well designed, mostly beautiful in the visuals department and you can store up to a few hundred of your favorite Cohibas or any cigars at once. You should never fill a humidor more that 75% full to allow for airflow of the humidity.

The last humidor that I would like to tell you about is the room humidor. A room humidor is exactly what it sounds like - a room that is used to 'maintain' cigars. You will only find these in giant or mid-sized cigar shops or in cigar aficionados homes, where they have hired a carpenter to design and build them. Cigars in these giant room sized humidors are very well maintained and because of the airflow, naturally age better than any other humidors.

Now that you know the importance of owning a humidor, if you don't already have one you should definitely invest in one soon, before irreversibly damaging your favorite stogies. After all, 'aged' cigars simply taste better.