A cigar is made up of three parts: Wrapper, Binder, and Filler.
It is common knowledge that cigars are made from a mixture of tobacco leaves, but how do these leaves determine the strength of the cigar or its unique flavor profile? Cigar creators, like Findy Cigar Company & Hookah Lounge in South Tampa, work closely with different types of tobacco leaves to blend a variety together to create a distinct and memorable flavor, such as the Findy Serie 1980 Connecticut 6 x 54, which uses a tobacco from Indonesia, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua. The individual leaves selected determine this based on their age, quality and type. They are arranged in a particular way to create the cigar shape, using three main components of the cigar – a wrapper, binder and filler.
Filler Tobacco
Filler tobacco makes up the middle of the cigar, and usually, this is what dictates the strength of the cigar. Filler leaves come in a number of different varieties such as seco, volado, olor and ligero. Out of these varieties, ligero would be described by experts as being the strongest in terms of nicotine content and overall strength, as well as having the fullest flavor. Findy sources their filler from the traditional regions of the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua for a unique, full palate experience.
Binder Leaf
Binder leaf is used to bind or compact the filler tobacco, ensuring that the filler tobacco keeps it’s shape and stays at the perfect consistency throughout the cigar, without too much or too little pressure. Usually, this means that it is the lowest quality of tobacco within a cigar as its main focus is to provide structure rather than taste. Generally, binder leaves are from the bottom of the tobacco plant that gets less sunlight, and therefore have less flavor, but they still do carry a stronger aroma. Experienced cigar blenders, however, use better quality leaves such as those from Indonesia, like Findy cigars. This allows them to add further complexity to the blend of leaves, adding more flavor.
Wrapper Tobacco
The majority of flavor in a cigar comes from the outer tobacco leaves, known as the wrapper. These leaves are carefully wrapped around the binder, and they are normally the highest-quality leaves in the cigar, coming from top tobacco plants, making them also the most expensive part of the cigar. The majority of the cigar flavor comes from this component, and therefore, it is important that they are of a great quality. Findy Cigars, for example, source the tobacco leaves for their wrappers from quality plants in Ecuador that have a stellar reputation, which is of a higher-quality than many other cigar wrappers in neighboring countries. Each cigar wrapper is hand inspected to ensure that they are uniform and seal in the binder leaf and filler tobacco. Wrapper tobacco can come in a number of different shades that will also give an insight into the flavor. The lighter types of wrapper such as Double Claro or Connecticut have a more subtle flavor, compared to the darker wrappers such as Maduro oscuro.
Cigar flavor is influenced by the combination of wrapper, binder, and filler tobacco.
Therefore, you can see that there is a clear difference between a cigar’s filler, binder and wrapper – each have a different quality and have an impact on the flavor. Therefore, if you are looking for quality cigars, look into the sourcing of the individual tobacco and the quality of leaf used throughout. At Findy Cigar Company & Hookah Lounge, our South Tampa location offers a variety of worldwide cigars, however those imported from Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, and Indonesia are known for possessing some of the best flavor in the industry. Come explore the various cigars available at Findy Cigar Company & Hookah Lounge.