Cigar cabinets

The cigar cabinet is the treasure chest of cigar lovers! It's where all your cigar delights are stored until they're ready to be smoked. Cigars dry out quickly when stored in ambient air without the protection of a suitable humidor. This seriously damages their aromas and, a fortiori, can render them totally unfit for consumption.

The humidor was designed to avoid this inconvenience. Its beneficial effects: not only does the stable wooden shell protect cigars from climatic variations and physical influences, it also protects them from insect pests such as the tobacco beetle. If you like to smoke cigars and want to stock up on them, you should certainly acquire a humidor with a Spanish cedar interior.

Cigar humidors come in all shapes, colors and price ranges. They come in all sizes, too: from travel humidors, which are very practical when you're on the move, to small humidity cabinets and huge chambers.

Depending on their volume, medium-sized domestic humidors can hold 30 to 70 cigars and are about the size of a shoebox. As for their exterior design, the only limit is the builders' imagination! Thus, most humidors are made of wood, varnished with wood varnish and decorative elements can be inlaid on the outside. Of course, as with all things, there are also extravagant humidor models made from slate, steel or coated marble.

By the way: travel humidors are recommended for longer stays, and can hold between 5 and 20 cigars. For a weekend getaway, prefer a cigar with aluminum tubes (often lined with cedar on the inside).

The best wood for humidors is what is known as "Spanish cedar". The term is somewhat misleading, since the wood neither comes from Spain nor is it made from real cedar. On the other hand, real cedar is a conifer with a very pronounced, even unpleasant odor. As a result, its rather strong fragrance could easily overpower the cigar's aromas. On the other hand, "Spanish cedar" comes from cedrela, a dicotyledonous laubbaum. The plant belongs to the mahogany tree family and grows in West Africa and South America.

Although there are different variants depending on their origin, the commonly accepted trade name is Cedro. Spanish cedar has the excellent property of bringing out the best of cigar aromas without overpowering the tobacco's natural flavors.

When it comes to the ideal environment for storing cigars, good advice is worth its weight in gold! Above all, it's important to observe the following rules:

1. A cigar provides the greatest amount of smoke with a water content equivalent to about 13% of its weight in water.
2. At an ambient temperature of 22°C and a relative humidity of 70%, around 13 grams of water/m3 are dissolved.

When we look for advice on how to store our cigars, we very often read that the humidity in the humidor should be adjusted according to the change in temperature. Not only would this be quite exhausting for you, but nothing could be further from the truth. For the sake of your cigars, you should simply ignore recommendations to increase the humidity in your humidor when the ambient temperature drops. The chemical structures of tobacco, combined with the physical processes involved in the formation of water vapor, lead to the elimination of water from tobacco above a certain percentage of humidity.

Take it from a cigar merchant: always keep your cigars at 70% humidity, so that the air humidity always remains the same. This will prevent your cigars' wrappers from bursting, for example. Also, make sure that cigars are neither stored below 16°C nor above 28°C.

How to determine humidor humidity? Most commercially available humidors are already equipped with a hygrometer. The hygrometer is only used to monitor the humidity in the humidor. They are also available in several versions, from analog to digital.

Cigar humidors provide cigars with the climate they love. A few years ago, most humidors were still equipped with a sponge. The main drawback was that the sponge was prone to drying out, so it had to be re-humidified frequently. Today, acrylic polymer humidifiers have become the new standard. This is because acrylic polymer has the formidable ability to absorb a large proportion of moisture and then spread it evenly through the air. Acrylic polymer can also be moistened with either distilled water or liquid propylene glycol. But it's also possible to do things differently. For example, instead of using acrylic polymer, the Guy Janot brand has chosen to use an open-pore mineral, which must be moistened with distilled water every four weeks.
Humidif Gelly Bags can also be used for several weeks to keep your cigars cool in an airtight environment.

The use of an electronic humidifier is recommended for larger cigar cabinets of up to 40 liters, as well as for humidor or walking humidor rooms. But domestic use is generally not necessary.