Blog Home

The Best Way to Light Your Cigar

If you've invested in a quality cigar for your enjoyment, the last thing you want to do is somehow harm the experience for yourself. Many people new to cigar smoking simply treat them like big cigarettes, and by lighting and smoking them incorrectly, they are never able to fully appreciate the cigar the way it is meant to be smoked. However, experienced cigar smokers know that cigar smoking is an art, and they know just what to do to get the very best smoking experience.

First, we are assuming that you know how to properly cut your cigar, a necessity before you light it. If you need a refresher, check out our blog entry How to Properly Cut a Cigar.

How to Properly Cut a Cigar

There are a lot of ways to mess up a cigar— improper storage, lighting it incorrectly and so on can harm or even ruin the smoking experience. If you cut it wrong, though, you may not even get a chance to smoke it at all. A badly cut cigar can burn too hot or completely fall apart!

If you have smoked cigars before and are simply looking to improve your technique, you can skip this paragraph. But for the purposes of instruction, let's say you are brand new to cigars. The end you cut is called the head. The head is the end you put in your mouth for smoking, near the label. The reason you need to cut it is that cigars are made with a closed, sealed head to help lock in as much freshness as possible as well as to keep the structure of the cigar secure. If you don't cut the head, you cannot smoke the cigar.

Jean Nicot & Tobacco

How did snuff and tobacco become so popular you ask?

Jean Nicot experimented with crushed tobacco leaves used as a snuff for curing migraine headaches. In 1560, Nicot gave a sample of this home remedy to Catherine de Medici who also suffered from chronic migraines. It was effective in relieving her headaches and the popularity of tobacco snuff grew among the aristocracy. In fact, people became so enthusiastic about its powers that tobacco became known as "Herba Medicea" or "Herba Catherinea".

Cigar History – Part 1

Tobacco was first used by the peoples of the pre-Columbian Americas. Native Americans apparently cultivated the plant and smoked it in pipes for medicinal and ceremonial purposes. On October 12, 1492, in the gulf of San Salvador in the Bahamas, Christopher Columbus discovered tobacco. He and his crew saw the natives there growing the tobacco and soon realized that it would become a valuable commodity. The name tobacco and its origin are still being debated. The word tobacco was used among pre-Columbian natives of the West Indies. Those who took it back with them called it tobacco; the Mayan verb "sikar" meaning "to smoke" later became the Spanish noun cigarro.

The Legacy of White Owl Cigars

Smoking tobacco has been something that people have been doing for almost as long as civilization has been around. Over the years, there have been ways to enjoy the rich flavors and calming nature that many smokers find from their favorite brands, there is also another part to all of this, however. Many of the popular companies that we see today started off as just a simple dream. Before these brands grew into the well-recognized labels, they had to first start off with something much smaller. White Owl Cigars is one of the companies that not only was able to grow in popularity but can also be viewed as a story of the American dream.