The Fat Cigar Trend

They're too big for some cutters, cigar cases and perhaps your mouth, but extra-fat cigars are in big demand

Jordan Russin
From the Print Edition:
The Best Places to Gamble, Sep/Oct 02

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Diamond Crowns helped open the eyes of manufacturers to the idea of thicker cigars, and to the options for blending that are available in a thicker ring gauge. Most cigarmakers that sell an unusually thick cigar cite the ability to blend a wide variety of tobaccos as the reason they've chosen to bring a fat cigar to market.

"Given the diameter of the cigar, you're afforded a very strong blend," says Michael Argenti, vice president of Tabacalera Perdomo S.A., which released Perdomo Cuban Parejo in 2001, a brand with ring gauges from 56 to 62. "On our Cuban Parejo, we're using a blend of five different tobaccos."

Argenti says Tabacalera Perdomo had a good reason for releasing an all-fat cigar brand: the company's thickest cigars are also its best sellers.

Some cigarmakers feel the thick cigar trend is a passing one. Several believe that juiced-up ring gauges will eventually amount to nothing more than a blip on the cigar world's radar screen. "I don't think this trend is going to continue," says Cooper Gardiner, director of marketing for General Cigar Co., which recently released Partagas Black Label, a brand whose thinnest ring gauge is 54 and largest is 60. "But I do think there are consumers out there that prefer that size."

Rakesh "Rocky" Patel, president of Indian Tabac Cigar Co., agrees. Last year he created a whopper: the Indian Tabac Cameroon Legend Gorilla, a 6 inch by 58 ring cigar. "These shapes are hot now; we'll see how long it lasts until the new thing comes around," Patel says. He'll be surprised if, 10 years from now, there is still a demand for his Gorilla. He personally isn't a fan of such fat cigars, and he has noticed a difference between Gorilla smokers and those who prefer traditional cigar sizes such as coronas, lonsdales and Churchills. "They're two totally different individuals," he says. "Maybe it's something to do with manly arrogance, but it usually is the bigger guys who are smoking [the fat cigars]. It has something to do with stature, with the way the cigar feels in your hand."

Consumers have mixed feelings as well. "Thicker cigars burn cooler and deliver a bigger bang for the buck," wrote one reader on cigaraficionado.com, the Web site of Cigar Aficionado magazine, in a recent poll on fat cigars. "I don't want to smoke a tree trunk -- that's too much work," said another. "Every once and a while they are a treat/meal, but I wouldn't make a steady diet of them," wrote a third.

The majority of smokers who answered the poll, 73 percent, smoke fat cigars, but they seem to do it more as a novelty. Only 1 percent said they smoke fat cigars exclusively, and only 18 percent said most of the cigars they smoke are fat.

Although fat cigars sell well for Tabacalera Perdomo, Argenti isn't ready to proclaim the death of the more traditional cigar sizes. "There's always a place for a corona," he says.

Regardless of the size of the smoker, Patel believes that many cigar aficionados will always be keen to try something new, even if that product never becomes their go-to smoke. "People are always looking for that hot new cigar," he says. Even if that cigar is too big for an ashtray.

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