Determining Blend Visually

[ATGroom]

I'm sure this will be old hat to some, but educational to others.

I have unrolled a Churchills of indeterminate origin and numbered the major leaves.

What would members assess each one as in terms of wrapper, filler, binder, volado, seco, ligero etc and how do you make that assessment

?

 

[kalibratecuba]

The best answer depends on your motivation for asking this question.

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[cigcars]

    1) Wrapper

    2,3,4,5)  Filler

    6,7) Binder

    *And looking at the outer cover of the wrapper it appears to have been a pigtail, but I'm not aware of what brand of Churchill would have a pigtail head.

[Çnote]

1 6 7 are pretty obvious

I'm very curious on the defining 2 3 4 5 by sight 

[El Presidente]

I think cigcars has nailed it. Touch and aroma helps a great deal with filler leaves. Visually I am not seeing any ligero. maybe 2 but aroma will be the give away.

 

[ATGroom]

8 hours ago, kalibratecuba said:

The best answer depends on your motivation for asking this question.

No motivation other than personal edification. Cigar was an unbanded rolling around in my singles drawer, but not suspicious. Almost certainly Cuban, possibly a custom although could be anything as I remove bands from time to time to scan them for CCW.

You see threads from time to time with a broken up cigar and comments like "look at all that ligero," but I've never seen one that gives a good guide to how to tell what is what.

At the moment CCW just lists the names of the leaves and implies that the higher on the plant they are the darker they will be, and I was wondering if I could put some pictures on there with "this is what ligero looks like", "this is seco" kind of thing.

Blending is a bit more nuanced than that. I saw an interview recently talking about the blend of the PSE2, that was saying that it uses the seco from the highest two leaves before it becomes ligero. So clearly there is a grey area of between the leaves.

 

4 hours ago, cigcars said:

    *And looking at the outer cover of the wrapper it appears to have been a pigtail, but I'm not aware of what brand of Churchill would have a pigtail head.

Not a pigtail, that was just how the wrapper came away. Cap is just above the wrapper more or less intact.

 

1 hour ago, El Presidente said:

Touch and aroma helps a great deal with filler leaves. Visually I am not seeing any ligero. maybe 2 but aroma will be the give away.

Cheers Rob. Might be a bit hard to describe, but can you articulate how one would differentiate between the leaves based on touch and aroma?

[El Presidente]

8 hours ago, ATGroom said:

Cheers Rob. Might be a bit hard to describe, but can you articulate how one would differentiate between the leaves based on touch and aroma?

Take good ligero in your hand, bring it up to your nose and inhale deeply. 

you will sneeze. 

Take the secco. do the same. you will note the difference. 

 

[Cigar Surgeon]

Tobacco is classified by texture and then by color. So you'd need to touch each of those leaves to confirm the priming. I think @cigcars pretty much nailed best guess.

[Kayslay]

1- most definitely wrapper leaf

6&7- most definitely binder. I read an interview recently with Hamlet in which he says he has never seen a Cuban cigar rolled with less than 2 binder leaves, which I thought was interesting.

2- Seems to be a viso leaf. Definitely not a Ligero leaf. Some of my tastier blends haven't had ligero in them at all. However I don't have access to Cuban tobacco, so taste is subjective.

3&4- are most definitely Seco leaves.

What I find interesting is that only 3 filler leaves made up enough to fill a Churchill. My bunches for a churchill are about 6-7 full filler leaves. 

[ATGroom]

13 hours ago, Cigar Surgeon said:

Tobacco is classified by texture and then by color. So you'd need to touch each of those leaves to confirm the priming.

Thanks, can you articulate how you would differentiate by touch? What texture should the higher leaves have that the lower leaves don't.

 

7 hours ago, Kayslay said:

6&7- most definitely binder. I read an interview recently with Hamlet in which he says he has never seen a Cuban cigar rolled with less than 2 binder leaves, which I thought was interesting.

For what it's worth, 6 is considerably more rolled up than any of the other leaves. Unrolled it would be the largest of any of them.
All the leaves are presented in the order that I was able to remove them from the cigar. As they are all bunched together it's a big of a grey area, but in general 2 was on the outside, 6 and 7 were tight in the centre of the bunch.

 

15 hours ago, El Presidente said:

Take good ligero in your hand, bring it up to your nose and inhale deeply. 

you will sneeze. 

Take the secco. do the same. you will note the difference. 

Sniffed all the leaves. No sneezes. Bit of a tickle in the nose on a few of them.

1. Almost no odour.
2,3,4,5. More or less equally aromatic. 4 I would say is the strongest but there's not a lot in it.
6,7. Still pretty aromatic, but notably less so than 2-5.

I don't know what tasting notes I would give other than "tobacco." Quite sweet smelling in general. Bit of raisin in there.

[NSXCIGAR]

Based on the number of filler leaves I see (looks like 2) I would say this is a 42 RG cigar or less, and therefore likely no ligero leaf is used. At that RG you'd only find a 1/4 leaf of ligero at most. Looks to me like 1 seco and 1 volado. The bits of scrap are probably volado used to fill out after the roller has bunched the ligero and seco. 

[ATGroom]

19 hours ago, NSXCIGAR said:

Based on the number of filler leaves I see (looks like 2) I would say this is a 42 RG cigar or less, and therefore likely no ligero leaf is used. At that RG you'd only find a 1/4 leaf of ligero at most. Looks to me like 1 seco and 1 volado. The bits of scrap are probably volado used to fill out after the roller has bunched the ligero and seco. 

Was a Julieta No.2 or something within a close shave of it. Definitely higher than 42. Photos attached are the cigar unmolested and then with the wrapper removed.

 

On 9/2/2020 at 4:27 AM, Kayslay said:

2- Seems to be a viso leaf.

"Viso" is not a term that is used in Cuban cigars as far as I can tell - at least, it doesn't appear in the descriptions of the process in The Great Book of the Habano or The World of the Habano, and Hector Luis Prieto doesn't use it when describing categorisation of leaves etc.

In the NC industry Viso is is a category of leaf between Seco and Ligero. As I mention above, blenders don't just think in Volado, Seco, Ligero but in "the top two leaves of Seco", indicating that for them blends are more complex than just "volado, seco, ligero," and draw from presumably around 9 sub categories within these grades.Not sure if they have terms for them but "viso" would fit as a light ligero or dark seco.

[nKostyan]

I've seen torsedor disassembling the cigar, sorting into leaves and determine their types by touch.

[Cigar Surgeon]

On 9/1/2020 at 8:35 PM, ATGroom said:

Thanks, can you articulate how you would differentiate by touch? What texture should the higher leaves have that the lower leaves don't.

Quite difficult to articulate but I'll do my best: 

The seco or volado leaves at the bottom of the plant will be quite thin and feel velvety and has the consistency almost of tissue paper. Viso feels more elastic or rubbery, the tobacco will still be thin but doesn't feel as fragile. When you get up to ligero the tobacco feels like leather and sandpaper had a baby together.

Within each of those you have varying degrees of classification. You can have a viso that performs like a ligero as an example.