Cigar salutations from the Old Glory Society*
The so-called Culebra cigar is the circus freak show of the cigar world. Three cigars impossibly twisted together, one big fat cigar band wrapped around them all and a little red ribbon tying them up at the head and foot. It’s a dumb idea … but if you ever get the chance to smoke one, it would be dumb to pass it up.
Apparently, Culebra means snake, three little cigar snakes wound around each other. It’s possible that this odd tobacco form has been around since the 1800s, but only a handful of manufacturers continue to make them. There doesn’t seem to be any good reason for this type of cigar to exist and all signs point to it being made merely as a gimmick. The individual cigars have to be underfilled so that they will be pliable enough to twist around the others, and who wants to smoke an underfilled cigar? It’s weird and I zero expectations.
Anyway, a Cuban Partagas Culebras was given to me as a gift. It was purchased at a legitimate cigar shop abroad and it had been sitting in my humidor for at least three years. It came in a little wooden box known as a coffin and when some friends were over last Saturday I pulled it out. One of my sons and my Godson volunteered to try it with me.
I removed the three twisted cigars from the box and removed the band and the ribbons. I thought I would need to delicately finesse them apart but they sorta naturally separated themselves. Now what? The cigars were approximately corona size but gnarled and wound like a curly fry. At the point where one cigar was bent around the other, there was a serious indentation, like a Piccolo Pete that had been severely squeezed with a pair of pliers.
The natural inclination was to somehow try to straighten each cigar (we didn’t) and because of the almost flattened section each cigar had, we figured they would be an impossibly tight draw. There was only one way to find out. In spite of the fact that they had one end pointing north while the other was heading west, we clipped the cigars per usual and had a go.
Amazingly, from first toke, the cigars were a smooth easy draw. Since the cigars were shaped like the letter “S”, it was a bit of geometric challenge to balance the damn things on an ashtray, but the cigars burned even and by almost any measure it was a wonderful smoke.
Frankly, I’d call the Partagas Culebras much more than a gimmick. I’ve seen them advertised for somewhere near the $90 range and I’ve blown ninety bucks on way stupider stuff than this.
In most of the information I’ve seen about this type of cigar they talk about it as a novelty, a conversation piece, something a cigar smoker should try once with friends. And indeed, it was fun to smoke these little cigar twists with the young lads, but had I known then what I know now, I probably would have hoarded the crooked little bastards for myself … and if you should ever have a similar opportunity, I suggest you do the same.
I smoke to your health.
