Do you remember the cigar craze in the 1990’s where everyone all of a sudden became a cigar aficionado comparing the superiority of a Cuban made Romeo y Julieta made famous by British wartime prime minister Sir Winston Churchill or the 1,200 hand-rolled H. Upmann cigars that President John F. Kennedy had his press secretary Pierre Salinger acquire for him the day before he signed a bill banning the import of any Cuban product into the United States.
Now of course the fad of cigar smoking is over much to the gratitude of every front line worker in the service trade, and also to the fact that almost all first world countries ban smoking in public places due to the inherent danger of passive smoking or second hand smoke.
Private Clubs
There are private clubs that you can still go to where it is possible to light up, and of course it is still possible to smoke a cigar in your own home. In fact it can be said that there is nothing better than sitting out on your porch or patio on a warm summer evening while having a cocktail and smoking a cigar.
Now pairing a cigar with a drink is like choosing a wine to accompany your food with some cigars being full and robust like a Nuit-Saint-George while others can be mild like a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau.
If you were to ask most cigar smokers what is the perfect drink to have with a cigar you would almost certainly hear a glass of cognac or a single malt whiskey for me though I am going to go with a drink that is produced from the very same Caribbean island that the world’s best cigars come from and that drink is of course rum.
Production
Rum is produced on the islands by harvesting the sugar cane by hand using a machete and delivering it straight to the mill where it is crushed in order to extract the canes juice which they heat and cook down to a syrup that they can use all year for fermentation, and not just at the time of harvest.
Traditionally of course cigar makers have been rum drinkers so it only makes sense that the two should go hand in hand and while most people associate rum as a component of a cocktail such as a Cuba Libre or a Mojito these are made from white rum and not the dark aged rum that are made to be drunk on their own.
While sipping aged rum it is also important to have the correct glassware which for rum is of course a long stemmed desert wine glass that was designed for fortified wines with a higher alcohol content making them perfect for sipping rum.
Prices of course differ and all rums taste different whether it is the popular Havana Club or Mount Gay from Barbados just make sure you choose one which is at least seven years old to enjoy sipping with your favourite cigar.
This post was written by Graham Travers. Graham has teamed up with outlet4spain. Gramham, is a rum mill manager and enjoys free lance writing, collecting cigars and trying diffrent rums.