When did it start?

[Puff Scotty]

Now..my question is, when did people start classifying cigars as 'aged' 'vintage' 'mature' 'fresh' etc ?..

In my Dad & Grandads days, both, may of mentioned in conversation that the cigar they were smoking had some "age on it" ..
And certainly some of Grandads that were kept by the tobacconist for him did accumulate some age over time, even some in his cabinet looked like they hadn't seen the light of day for a coon's age..but I don't think either of them ever paid a premium for aged cigars & I don't remember as a younger man paying over the odds prices on cigars myself..
It seems it's a culture that's been deliberately cultivated since the late 90's..would you say that was fairly accurate??

[daniel2001]

I'd agree completely. It's the same with guitars - generally anything that's 25 years or more is considered a "vintage" guitar, which encompasses some of the truly awful guitars that big names produced in the 80's.

Companies seem to be picking up on this and using it for marketing purposes (lots of new guitars are now available "relic-ed", or made to look old and road worn).

It's a fad. Give it ten years and some other term will be thought up. The Internet used to be the Internet, and now its "the cloud". Just a marketing term.


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[cj121]

Not having been around as long as some, I'd struggle to put a chronology on this. There's definitely marketing at play. This is obviously exploited to financial advantage in many arenas, with cigars fitting the bill nicely. Looking elsewhere, descriptors of 'shabby chic' (read knackered ol' shite) retro and old school attract, or attempt, a premium. I wouldn't be surprised if some 'e-tailers' were holding back older stock, punting their 'fresh' wares, until primo prices could be attached.

[Puff Scotty]

LOL..I have some "shabby chic" cigars....

[monkey66]

Probably post 1999 after the last cigar boom/bust period. Probably fair to say that before this period most serious UK retailers only put (reasonably) aged stock on their shelves so sticks were 'ready to smoke', give or take. Then their was a big shortage and the old, revolving stock was not replenished and sticks went straight to the shelf.

The cigar business is a business after all. Of course they have jumped on the 'vintage' train, why wouldn't they. We should consider whilst 'vintage' is relatively new to cigars and guitars, it has been used to sell wine, cars and art for centuries.

'Vintage' in the wine sense (defining a particularly good year) has been bastardised to mean 'anything with a few years'.

The number of years that defines 'vintage' shrinks with commercial and consumer desire.

I would speculate that we are also contributing to the situation. By 'us' I mean the on-line cigar community/blogs/shops/forums which can provide a huge data-dump to new members of this hobby. When I started this did not exist so my knowledge was very slowly gleaned from a few shops and family, some was great and some total bs. But if I were starting now I would know all about so called 'vintage' cigars and they were 'apparently' the best. I would chase them, pushing the price up and the age down.

All just MHO

[Moon Dancer]

IMHO, cigars mean all things to all men, whether it be so called vintage, aged, fresh or be it from a friends uncle who works in a cigar factory.


That said, I supect if allowed, we could easly be fooled by the so called self appointed experts or commisioned marketing boy's. I've been smoking cigars for about 57 years and still believe, with all but a few exceptions, cigars come to their maturity between 8-15 years. And after that, believe and pay what you want to!




The post year 2000, marketing boy's with all their fancy editions, etc, would be better directed at bringing up the standard of normal production. The Cubans are using their good stuff for others at the expence of normal production which in taste especially and maturity has gradually lessened over the same period.


I suspect tobacco leaf is now more like maturing timber, felled, dried, and into the factory within 9-12 months. And we all know how long that sort of timber lasts


Rant over

[fordi]

Now..my question is, when did people start classifying cigars as 'aged' 'vintage' 'mature' 'fresh' etc ?..

Good question Puff!!


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[monkey66]

IMHO, cigars mean all things to all men, whether it be so called vintage, aged, fresh or be it from a friends uncle who works in a cigar factory.


That said, I supect if allowed, we could easly be fooled by the so called self appointed experts or commisioned marketing boy's. I've been smoking cigars for about 57 years and still believe, with all but a few exceptions, cigars come to their maturity between 8-15 years. And after that, believe and pay what you want to!




The post year 2000, marketing boy's with all their fancy editions, etc, would be better directed at bringing up the standard of normal production. The Cubans are using their good stuff for others at the expence of normal production which in taste especially and maturity has gradually lessened over the same period.


I suspect tobacco leaf is now more like maturing timber, felled, dried, and into the factory within 9-12 months. And we all know how long that sort of timber lasts


Rant over

I think this is good stuff apart from the last paragraph.

The current information is that the 2012/2013 rolling stock has been fermented for 24-36 months. This was not the case a few years ago.

If correct this would go a long way to explain the improvement of off-the-shelf smokes. There is also a consensus amongst many smokers that 2012 has been a superb year and early indications are that it is continuing in 2013.

[tippexx]

Fresh = Rolled yesterday
Aged = Been in the shop for a bit
Mature = Nobody buys them
Vintage = An industry classification for anything with a box date earlier than the last Olympics

[tippexx]

The cigar business is a business after all.

Yes, and keeping an extensive stock is expensive. I may be wrong but the retailers will be paying VAT and Duty when they order. Easier, as the smaller retailers do, to use H&F as the storage facility and order in as and when they need to.

Age, unless a retailer deliberately determines to squirrel something away, is governed by movement. Popular vitola are difficult to find with 'age', PDS4 for example. Whereas the not so popular can be found in abundance. How much incentive is there for a retailer to lay in quantities of boxes these days? Possibly not much, in many ways it's dead stock, obviously with an asset value but making no contribution to this months or any months sales figures for some time. Jewellers don't buy in expensive watches to hoard them on the basis that they will accrue in value, they buy them in to sell them as quickly as possible at a profit. Same with tobacconist, as Monk says ... it's a business and modern businesses try not to hold any more stock than they absolutely need to.