Part of smoking a cigar involves cutting the cap and opening the airway for the subsequent draw of smoke. If you grew up in the eighties like I did, then this incredibly graphic scene from Sam Raimi’s underrated Darkman may have been your introduction to a cigar cutter. I can tell you with certainty that it was mine.
However, up until last week I was naive to the variety of cuts that one can make when prepping a cigar for smoking. I had been performing what’s known as a straight cut, which is pretty straightforward, but not always easy to perform. You simply insert the tip of the crown into the double slicer and push both blades inward.
What you don’t necessarily know until you try it a few times is that you can easily (and I mean very easily) ruin a cigar with a poorly performed straight cut.
If you slice too short, you get a muted draw.
If you slice too long, you can end up loosening some of the filler and wind up with a mouthful of tobacco
If your blades are not sharp enough, you can smash the crown and impair the cigar’s ability to draw
Dull blades can also cause the wrapper to loosen and your cigar won’t burn properly (and you’ll also end up eating tobacco)
I have done all four of these things. Multiple times.
Then I watched a video with the guys from Davidoff and one of the guys said: “I’m using a double V cut for this cigar.”
“What’s that?” I asked myself. Then I asked my colleague Vahi—our cigar buyer at Mission—about the double V. You know what he says to me? “That’s all I do with my cigars.”
Well….when were you going to tell me about it?!!!!!!
It turns out there’s another type of cigar cutter (unlike the straight cutter from Darkman) that carves out a V-shaped crevasse in the cigar, opening the airway without decapitating the entire crown. If you do it twice, vertically and horizontally like a + sign, you get what’s called a double-V cut.
The first thing I did after speaking to Vahi was ring up for a $3.99 V cutter at Mission. The first thing I did when I got home that day was grab a cigar from my humidor and attempt my first double-V cut.
And let me tell you this…..I’m never going back to the straight cut.
Having performed the double-V now on four different occasions, I can tell you that all four cigars drew effortlessly and performed flawlessly. I also enjoy keeping some of the rounded edge of the crown, rather than opening up the entire end, as I prefer the way it feels.
In any case, this revelation in my world is likely old news to more experienced smokers, but since I was kept in the dark for months about this process, I wanted to share it here for your potential future employment.
-David Driscoll