Black and Mild, Backwoods, Swisher, Phillies, Garcia y Vega, Hav-a-Tampa… the list of famous names we all know and love goes on and on. These are the machine-made cigars that have filled the shelves of gas stations and convenience stores for generations, and they’re clearly not going anywhere. While our primary focus is on premium handmade cigars, we may from time to time stock machine-made cigars to cater to the needs of our customers. There’s no law that says you can’t smoke a Fuente on Saturday afternoon and a Backwoods honey berry on Monday morning, so we sometimes keep some boxes on our shelves.
It’s a free country, after all!
For those who aren’t familiar with cigarmaking, there are two main ways to go about it. For all the high-quality luxury smokes that top the charts at Cigar Aficionado and similar outlets, you’re looking at handmade cigars. Cigar rollers (aka torcedores) in factories are given piles of whole leaf tobacco in the proper amounts for a given blend. Then, they bunch up and roll the leaf, known as long-filler because it is whole, rather than chopped up into small flakes. These bunched-up filler rolls are wound tightly with a binder leaf and then a beautiful wrapper leaf is applied for the final layer. These are the exquisite cigars you’ll find at $5, $10, or even more for a single smoke.
Then there are machine-made cigars.
Instead of the whole leaf being given to artisan cigar rollers, tobacco is chopped up and fed into a series of machines at the factory that turns it into a final smokable cigar. Instead of the work being done by hand, sophisticated equipment is used to churn out a much higher volume of cigars than any group of human beings could do in the same factory footprint. Essentially, it’s mass production versus handmade products.
Machine-made cigars are more cost-effective to make, and often don’t use tobacco that is as high quality (or high cost) as that which goes into premium handmade's. These cost savings are then passed along to consumers, making machine-made cigars a much cheaper option for those in search of a smoke.
You’ll also often find that machine-made cigars are offered in a huge variety of flavors, like vanilla, cherry, coffee, Irish crème, and lots more. Some become fan favorites, and can even turn into a go-to for people who like a regular reliable smoke. When you need a down-to-earth cigar that isn’t a whole fancy experience, give machine-made cigars a shot. If you’re not a fan, no big deal.
Please browse our selection of machine-made cigars at your leisure.
