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The Cigar Adviser
Published in: January 1, 1998
Published January/February 1998
The Cigar AdviserQ: I am considering turning my home office into a walk-in humidor. It is approximately 15 x 10 x 8 feet, with windows that get intense sunlight.
Lloyd Mitchell
St. Vincent, West Indies
A: A room this size presents several difficult, but not insurmountable problems. However, no one should think that he can just take a room or a closet, slap some cedar on the walls and install an AC unit to create a humidor. It is much more complicated. To keep a constant humidity and temperature, you want to insulate the room so that the temperature fluctuation can be minimized, and certainly so it is not affected by the ambient outside temperature. In your case, that includes either removing or blocking off the windows. You will need to install not only an air conditioner, but also an electronic humidifier that will keep the humidity at a constant level. The need for a constant humidity level also means that the room must be able to maintain a tight seal, and be constructed with a minimally aromatic wood, such as Spanish cedar, that won't warp from high moisture.
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Q: I have a humidor that holds 100-plus cigars; can I just keep one or two in there without them getting too soggy? Second, is it OK to keep cigars of different brands in the same humidor?
M.B. Baria
West Windsor, New Jersey
A: You will have to be a little careful about your humidification device, and how often you recharge it. If you only store one or two cigars, you could very easily turn them soggy. But it shouldn't be a problem. The humidifier should be humidifying the air, which in turns humidifies your cigars. Most likely, you will find that you don't need to recharge the humidification device quite as often.
Your second question is a little trickier. In the short term, non-flavored cigars sitting next to each other in a small humidor for a couple of days or even a week are not going to be significantly altered by the proximity. Over six months or a year, there's little doubt that the cigars could acquire the others' characteristics. So, you want to keep them separate, either with dividers or even cedar sheets. But beware: if you put a flavored cigar in a humidor, it may dramatically affect everything in the box. In one of our taste tests, we had to throw out a dozen cigars from a humidor because a flavored cigar had come in contact with them overnight, and it affected the taste and aroma of everything it touched.
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Q: I regularly order boxes of Cuban cigars from overseas tobacconists and have them sent directly to business associates and clients around the world. Since I am not attempting to import them into the United States, am I violating the law? And, if I store Cuban cigars in a foreign tobacconist's humidor, is that also illegal? What about if I buy Cuban cigars and smoke them overseas?
Name Withheld
Smithtown, New York
A: Good questions. And, quite frankly, we believe that you've touched on a gray area in the Trading with the Enemies Act. The intent of the law is to prohibit all American trade with Cuba. Therefore, any transaction that results in your U.S.-based funds being transferred to pay for Cuban goods could be construed as being in violation of the law. Which means that if you buy Cuban cigars to smoke overseas, you are breaking the law because your money has gone to pay for Cuban goods. That includes the practice you describe of sending boxes to your colleagues.
In reality, the U.S. Treasury Department can't monitor every overseas transaction. In addition, as far as we know, no one has ever been prosecuted or detained for smoking a Cuban cigar in the United States or overseas; in its application, the law has never sought to single out individuals for the purchase or smoking of Cuban cigars when they are overseas. Importing them, or attempting to import them, is another matter. That is illegal, and as we reported in our December 1997 issue, it is something the U.S. Treasury is spending more time and effort to uncover and prosecute.
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