Wine and Cigars

I enjoy an occasional cigar with a good scotch but am wondering about cigars with wine. I recall that years ago I had a cigar with a brunello and enjoyed it. Does anyone out there drink wine with cigars?

if the cigar is an Arturo Fuente Hemmingway and the wine more like a White Owl, there is a certain rustic charm to the experience,
but normally cigars are far better off with whiskies, cognacs/armagnacs, calvados or Schnäpse…

Have tried everything from Champagne to Zinfandel, a few might have been (at most) acceptable, but none really worked. For cigars, I stick to Aged Rums and Coffee

Cool, then I can keep that birth year Bas Armagnac in the cellar next time you’re out!

Several stimulants are used to help the initial breaking down of a big solid meal.
-The sweet dessert (with the sweet wine along), is one. -The good coffee is another. -Liquors like Cognac, rum, whisky can also do the trick.
-And a nice piece of tobacco…
All known to help the digestion (empiric research shows). And all certainly not to benefit the health (in the long run).

After larger private dinners, I sometimes find myself with a glass of selected red wine and a cigar(mild havanas).
It is a quite different mix in the mouth, compared to the food/wine few hours before.
And it can be a very nice exercise/sensation for the taste buds. Cigars are on the sour/bitter side, so the little sweet from an aged bord/burg, will start to show more. The smoky elements from the wine are also pushed in the background.
If the wines served are monumental ones, I would never smoke them in.
I have drunk the 1985 and '86 Haut-Brion after dinner with a cigar, and they both liked the company, and so did I.
A super '83 Palmer also saw some Cuban smoke once, and didn’t cough at all.

Btw. I normally get sent out into the garden, with My cigar and glass, so it’s best done in the summer time.

Regards, Soren.

If you enjoy the combination, more power to you, and I wouldn’t suggest you shouldn’t enjoy them together.

To me, the presence of a lit cigar within 100 yards of a glass of wine utterly destroys the ability to discern a damn thing in the glass. When cigars get lit, I get going. (Cigarettes too, for that matter. Or heavy perfume/cologne)

This.

Rare that I fire one up, but in the past if I did, it was with scotch.

Heavy perfume/cologne can really get Me moving seats too.
At the 1999 Bordeaux En Primeur tasting held at Bruun Rasmussen, Copenhagen, I remember one of the rooms (6-10 chateaux serving in each room), people noted fantastic flowery aromas in the wines poured, and it really was an aromatic room… They had overseen two large vases in the corners, with giant white lilies.
They were removed, and the Durfort Vivens a.o. slowly began to receive more adequate scores.

If good wine is the main theme, all strong (alien) aromas must be avoided ! If it’s a great evening party, aromas of all kinds will be present (the party smell), and the finer nuances get lost.

Regards, Soren.

I have enjoyed LBV port or tawny port with cigars. Dry wines, not so much.

Tawny port is my favorite with a cigar

When you have a cigar, the focus should be on what wine or spirt compliments that experience. I recall having a corked 1976 d’Yquem, which was a bummer. But when it was consumed with cigars, no one could tell the wine was corked; cigars do that to one’s palate. That being said, I would not seek out corked wines to drink with cigars. Better to select a wine or spirit that will enhance the overall experience. Towards that end, port, champagne, scotch, cognac, armagnac, sipping rum and chartreuse all work quite well. I don’t think anyone would say that consuming a beverage with cigars is the best way to appreciate the subtlety of the beverage, but if you are both a cigar aficionado and a person who enjoys fine wine or spirits, the combination of the two is enjoyable.

I agree and really hate on the cigarettes and cologne, but for some reason I like the smell of a good cigar (not me smoking them) and me with a scotch, bourbon, or port.

I’m with Neal. The thing is, for people who don’t smoke, there’s not a lot of difference between the smoke of tobacco or burning tires. It’s all more or less horrible. And it gets into your clothes and hair and the next day when you walk past the pile of clothes if you didn’t throw them in the wash right away, it smells even worse. I have a friend and he likes cigars so every so often fires one up outside. I sit upwind and still take a shower first thing when I get home.

I know lots of people like them, but for me they’re a huge pass.

On occasion I’ve enjoyed a half Toscano with Barolo or Barbaresco at the end of a meal and tasting with my mate Cos. It always comes at the very end of the lunch or dinner. We retire to the veranda with our glasses and light up. It was Cos who first proposed that we should have a cigar after a meal with nebbiolo and I thought “why not” even though I’d never considered it before. They pair quite well in my opinion. Once I got talking to Cos he shared that he had never considered it either until he was chatting with Beppe Rinaldi and Beppe lit up a Toscana in the cantina after they had done a tasting. Cos asked a few questions and came to realise Beppe enjoys a cigar with a glass of Barolo. YMMV but yes, I do enjoy occasionally enjoy a cigar at the end of a meal and tasting with a glass of nebbiolo.

Pairing cigars and wine is as diverse as the palates we have on the board. I don’t like many old world wines and few light bodied cigars. Old palate needs more flavor in both realms. The real question is which one are you trying to enjoy, the wine, the cigar or both.

I can smoke just about anything with Scotch and water as it is lighter in flavor and has sufficient alcohol to cut the tar on my taste buds. Surprisingly, I discovered that Sauvignon Blanc usually has enough acidity to cut/reduce tar build up. The cigar tastes fresher and not interfered with by heavy flavors of the wine. I would assume that holds true for the more acidic old world wines.

With heavier wines or port, I gravitate towards a full bodied natural wrapped cigar. One of my favorites is the Dominican Cohiba Robusto or Toro. Smoke them til the toothpick catches fire. My alternative is something with spice like a sun grown wrapper like My Father Cigar Flor de Las Antillas. The spice can be complementary to the wine/port and vice versa.

When I have the uninterrupted time to sit and enjoy both, I have a tendency to chase the flavors of both the wine and cigar. A regular sip, a regular draw. A swish and a swish. A cascade by forcing the wine to the roof of my mouth with my tongue, forcing the wine over the taste buds on the sides of my tongue and the same with a draw on the cigar. I’ve even chewed both and picked up nuances.

We recently got the A. J. Fernandez Last Call Robusto. It is a slow smoking old time, (world), cigar with tobacco flavors of the 60’s and 70’s. Smooth and gets tastier with each puff. If you can find them in your neighborhood, get a couple and try them with your favorite liquor, wine, dessert wine or beer/ale. I think it might even go well with milk.

Just as everyone has different preferences, different palates, cigar and wine pairing ultimately comes down to personal preferences too. I’ve tried the “classic” port/sherry pairing, I’ve tried the Riesling/acidic white pairing, and I’ve tried BRX pairing. IMHO, while they’re not bad pairings, I find myself to be enjoying the wine separately from the delight of a cigar. In my experience, I haven’t had a wine and cigar pairing that complements each other.

While I’ve not had fine, aged Bordeaux/Burgundy/Barolo with a cigar, I would hesitate on the thought that the heavy smoke and the tar build up may negatively influence my experience with such a wine.

The pairings that I’ve found to work best for my palate have been:

1. Black coffee. The acidity in a single origin coffee helps me cut the tar build up on tongue, and the linger of the coffee taste serves as a threshold for the harsher elements of the cigar, and highlights the nutty and floral notes.

2. Cognac. I find that the clean fruit notes are often accentuated after puffs.

3. Barleywine/old ale/Scotch ale. This is a rather new discovery for me. I haven’t figured out what’s so great about it, but it is awesome.

4. Havana Club rum. The prominent stone fruit notes (similar to Cognac) really help complement the cigar.
   
   
   In fact, at the time of typing this post: 2004 RyJ Exhibicion #4 with a Panama S.O.

I have also struggled to find pairings between wine and cigars that work for me. I do, however, absolutely love to pair cognac with my cigars!

There are different things that this can mean.

If the main priority at that moment is to have a cigar, and you wish to drink a wine with it, you can certainly do that and have the experience be fine. I find that, interestingly, the cigar amplifies the feeling of juiciness and acidity in a wine (in a way that I find perfectly pleasant). Thus, if I pick a ripe syrah, grenache, zinfandel or something like that, it can be quite tasty alongside the cigar; in fact, this is a pretty good use for those bottles in your collection that you find to be too ripe, too low in acid, too spoofy or whatever. Of course, fortified and sweet wines are good as well. I actually prefer red wines as an accompaniment to cigars over scotch, though of course I’m a wine berserker.

On the other hand, if the main focus is the wine, then I agree with the chorus that you wouldn’t smoke at the same time. Not that the wine might not be pleasant enough, but you’re going to lose the aromas and nuances that make a wine special, so unless you’re just so balla’ that you don’t care about the missed opportunity, I wouldn’t use a wine you really wanted to experience alongside a cigar.

Needless to say, for those who just don’t like cigars at all like Greg T, then there was never any issue to begin with.

I best match that I found was the freezer ice wines of Wagner Vineryards of the finger lakes. The wines weren’t very complex but the sugar and acid worked well with the cigar and the price was right. They made two from hybrid grapes of which the vignoles was better than the Vidal with the cigar. It had more body and held up better than the Vidal which worked with the lightest cigars only. I have no idea if these wines still exist. Today, I would be looking for a sweet petit manseng which is easy to find in Virginia and which I think may be an even better match than the Wagners. For sure the better Petit Mansengs are better wines.

When I am smoking a cigar and drinking wine, the focus for me is on the cigar. Most times when I am smoking a cigar and drinking wine, I’ve already had a whole bunch of wine and food. At times I’ll switch to a port or scotch, but most of the time I am just polishing off whatever bottles are around and open.

I like drinking port and syrahs with cigars, but it’s mainly to consume some alcohol while savoring the cigar.