The Retroinhale: How to Test Cigar Body

First I'd like to give a shout out to the guys at tappedthatash, with whom I'm looking to cross promote my store. They're pretty neat guys, the lot of them, and seem to jibe pretty well with my style. If you're looking for no nonsense reviews, they're up to the task.

I've had a couple people hit me up on reddit's /r/cigars asking about how to determine the body of the cigar. I'd like to get one thing out of the way: as I have mentioned before, when referring to body, I speak of Nicotine content. It seems like everyone has their own definition of what "body" is when referring to cigars. For some, including the publisher of the 33 Cigars journal I spoke about earlier, the "body" of a cigar is simply the part you hold in your hand. Well, that's actually true. In construction terms, a cigar has three sections: head, where you smoke, body, where you hold, and foot, where you light. So while 33 Books isn't incorrect, their definition of body is somewhat unimportant when rating cigars. I mean, what are you going to say in your rating?

"I found the body to be round."

Get out of here. Go.

I'm not here to toot my own horn, but I've spoken with several classically trained tobacconists, rollers, blenders, people that own the companies you know and love, and body is Nicotine content, that's pretty much it.

That being out of the way, I've already spoken on how the industry has a tendency to confuse Body and Flavor. I'm not going to reiterate too much, but just because a cigar is mild in flavor does not mean it's incapable of knocking you on your ass with huge body.

DJ HawaiianShirt asked me on an earlier post about ways to detect the strength of a cigar without relying on reviews or asking your tobacconist. Truthfully, there's only one, and it's right between your eyes and your mouth.

The Retroinhale, commonly known around my shop as "rolling the smoke" is puffing on the cigar in your mouth, and exhaling it through your nose without inhaling it into your lungs. I'm not going to lie, it's a tricky technique at first, but I can no longer smoke without retroinhaling automatically. Retroinhaling, like learning to drive manual, can be difficult. But, like riding around in your friend's 5.0 Mustang with a manual transmission (I'm talking to you, StormSigma), it opens your up to new possibilities.

The tongue is pretty weak at detecting certain flavors, we actually have two palates to aid us in flavor-detection. Your lower palate is in the roof of your mouth, your upper is actually in your nasal cavity. They're both different in what they can taste, which is why some people love the smell of foods and hate the taste - the two are highly related but still completely different. Retroinhalation allows you to savor the flavor from both regions of your palate, opening you up to previously unknown flavors of your cigar. If you smoke from your mouth alone, you're only getting half the flavor.

As an added benefit, retroinhalation is a mechanism by which you can determine the body (read: Nicotine Content) of your cigar. In the bridge of your nose are a series of detectors that become irritated in the presence of Nicotine (can you tell I'm not exactly a biology major?). The "burn" you get from retroinhale is directly related to the cigar's body. More burn equals more body. Sadly, this means you have to smoke a cigar to determine it's true body, but it beats enjoying a quality stick, only to find out you need to go vomit half-way through - least to note the aforementioned benefit of more flavors.

Over time, you'll develop a really highly calibrated sense of a cigars body from the first few warm-up puffs. I can often tell if a cigar will be mild, medium, or full before the flavor completely turns on.

Guys, try it out and let me know what you think. It definitely beats judging the body based on the nausea you get post-burn.

-Ephram Rafael Nadaner

Current Smoke: Ezra Zion Jamais Vu (consistent burner, but not my style)