// bourbon & cigars
Cigar Glossary
20 cigar terms, from construction to sizing vocabulary.
Binder
The tobacco leaf that holds a cigar's bunched filler leaves together before the wrapper is applied. Binder leaves are chosen mainly for elasticity and burn quality rather than visible appearance, since they're hidden under the wrapper.
Cap
The small piece of wrapper leaf applied to the head (the end you cut or puncture before smoking) that seals the wrapper and keeps it from unraveling. It's cut away, not the whole head, before lighting.
Churchill
A long parejo vitola, traditionally around 7 inches with a roughly 47-50 ring gauge, named for Winston Churchill's well-documented preference for large cigars.
Cigar Band
The paper band, usually printed with a brand's name and design, wrapped around a cigar near the head. Originally used to identify a manufacturer and, by some accounts, to keep white gloves clean -- today it's primarily a branding and identification device.
Connecticut Wrapper
A wrapper category associated with tobacco grown in the Connecticut River Valley (or, in "Connecticut-seed" usage, tobacco grown elsewhere from Connecticut seed stock). Usage of the term varies by manufacturer -- some reserve it strictly for Connecticut-grown leaf, others use it more loosely for the seed lineage regardless of growing region.
Draw
The amount of resistance felt when pulling air through a cigar while smoking. Too tight a draw can be difficult to smoke; too loose can burn hot and fast. Draw is affected by how the filler was bunched during rolling, not just by ring gauge.
Figurado
A cigar with a non-uniform or shaped profile rather than a straight cylinder -- tapered, bulged, or otherwise irregular along its length. Torpedo is a common figurado shape.
Filler
The blend of tobacco leaves that makes up the body of a cigar, bunched inside the binder. Most premium cigars use "long filler" -- whole leaves running the length of the cigar -- rather than chopped scrap, which is more typical of machine-made cigars.
Foot
The end of the cigar that's lit -- the opposite end from the cap. On most shapes the foot is simply the open end of the rolled tobacco.
Gordo
An informal term (Spanish for "fat") for a cigar with an unusually large ring gauge, generally 60 or above, regardless of its exact length.
Habano Wrapper
A wrapper designation associated with Cuban-seed tobacco. As with Connecticut wrapper, conventions vary: it can refer to leaf actually grown in Cuba, or to Cuban-seed tobacco cultivated elsewhere (Nicaragua and Ecuador are common sources), depending on the manufacturer's own usage.
Humidor
A storage environment -- a box, cabinet, or room -- built to hold a stable relative humidity (and often temperature) suited to keeping cigars in good condition over time.
Maduro
A wrapper category associated with darker leaves that have undergone additional fermentation and aging. "Maduro" (Spanish for "ripe" or "mature") describes a processing approach and resulting color range rather than one single tobacco varietal -- different manufacturers reach a maduro wrapper by different methods.
Parejo
A cigar with a straight-sided cylindrical shape and a uniform ring gauge along its length -- the most common cigar profile. Robusto, Toro, and Churchill are all parejo vitolas.
Ring Gauge
A measurement of a cigar's diameter, expressed in 64ths of an inch. A 50 ring gauge cigar is 50/64 of an inch (about 0.78 in / 20 mm) across. Ring gauge doesn't by itself determine strength or flavor intensity -- it affects burn rate and how the blend's tobaccos interact as they burn together.
Robusto
A common, short and thick parejo vitola, typically in a roughly 4.75-5.5 inch length and 48-52 ring gauge range depending on the manufacturer -- there's no single fixed industry specification for the name.
Toro
A common parejo vitola, typically longer than a Robusto at roughly 6-6.5 inches with a similar 50-54 ring gauge range -- exact dimensions still vary by manufacturer.
Torpedo
A figurado format with a tapered, pointed head that narrows to a point rather than ending in a flat, rounded cap.
Vitola
A cigar's size and shape, described by its length and ring gauge together (e.g. a 5 x 50 Robusto). The term comes from Cuban cigar-making tradition and is used industry-wide as shorthand for a specific format.
Wrapper
The outermost tobacco leaf rolled around a cigar. Wrapper leaves are grown and selected for appearance and combustibility as much as flavor -- they're typically the most expensive leaf in a cigar by weight, and their color and texture are the first things a smoker judges a cigar by.
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