Robustojoe: Online Cigar Magazine

Here’s the scene: (cue howling wind) you are invited to a dinner party to which friends are bringing guests you have not met. There you find the food plentiful and the company delightful. Afterwards your host leads you to the backyard, someone offers a cigar…one you have never smoked. Your curiosity is piqued and you graciously accept what looks like a potentially good cigar. You light it and immediately can tell it has a smooth and aromatic flavor. As you continue to smoke you are thinking perhaps you’ll buy some for yourself. Upon arriving home the cigar is still resonating on your palate, and as you drift off to sleep you recall the pleasant experience of sharing a good cigar with a potential new friend. The next morning you arise to find that something has come over you. It is an unshakable thought of the cigar you smoked the night before. That wonderful cigar has captivated your imagination and left you desiring another. As the day progresses you feel an urge to go online and look up how much a box of those cigars would cost. As you browse, your recollection of the cigar begins to build and gradually turns into an insatiable desire to possess them. In an instant you have ordered a five pack and chosen expedited shipping. You want them as soon as possible. After what seems like endless days of waiting, the package finally arrives and resisting the urge to smoke one immediately, you put your new treasures into the humidor for conditioning. After a couple of days, the time has finally come to enjoy the much-anticipated event and upon lighting, you find the cigar to be better than you had remembered it. But the attraction doesn’t end there. In the days that follow, you find yourself mysteriously drawn to smoke yet another. Yearning for that deeply satisfying experience, this new cigar is calling you to, beckoning for your return. You think about smoking one of your old favorites, but the draw of the new acquisition is too great. You reach into your humidor, brushing aside some old friends, looking like a man possessed with a singular task in mind. You light it up, sit back and feel the wonderful satisfaction of eternal bliss. You suddenly find yourself at the computer, looking up the price of a box, you must stockpile these, and they are calling you.

If this scenario sounds familiar, you may have been bitten by the mysterious phenomenon known as “Cigar Memory”, the singular memory of smoking a particular cigar. To understand this phenomenon we need to examine our cigar buying patterns. How we remember a good cigar can often drive us to make a purchase even more than the act of actually smoking it. Could it be “Cigar Memory” that drives our need to possess certain cigars? Perhaps…perhaps not. Maybe it is the cigars themselves that, in effect, possess us! Just as Nosferatu bites his victims and summons them into the night, so will a good cigar beckon us to smoke it again and again.

Cigar Memory may be the single most important element that influences our likes and dislikes when smoking cigars. How we remember things guides us through life in every possible manner, but with cigars, “Cigar Memory” plays a heightened role. Our experience of smoking a good cigar is repeatable, and our impulse to faithfully recreate that intimate experience is reinforced with each subsequent cigar. The notion of cigars possessing the smoker is nothing new. After all, nicotine is addictive. But the cigar smoking experience is more complex than a simple addiction. For many cigar smokers, nicotine is not the allure. We can go weeks without smoking and suffer no withdrawal symptoms. The overall experience of smoking a cigar can be more germane to what makes smokers love their cigars rather than a simple nicotine addiction. The many facets of cigar smoking is an interesting subject and best saved for another article, but suffice it to say that cigar smokers are passionate about their pastime in which “Cigar Memory” plays an important role. As we continue to be seduced by the magical nature of smoking a good cigar, it appears we are useless to resist. To this I say take me, I’m yours.