Tear-off: Cigar Band Report Card

The dreaded band tear-off: notoriously the most lascivious portion of the smoking experience, yet one that’s far too often met with disappointment. Every smoker has their personal preference when it comes to removing the band; be it when the ash meets paper, before the cigar is lit, or the occasional burn-right-through-it smoker.

Unfortunately, this is an overlooked portion of the smoking experience—especially by many manufacturers—that can be the difference between enjoying a cigar well into nub territory and calling it quits before the smoke has given all it has to give. Sometimes, it’s the littlest of annoyances that can leave you with a bad taste in your mouth. A poor de-banding experience, in my opinion, falls in this category. Sure, many wrappers are hearty enough to withstand the poking, pulling, and corkscrew tearing process that is often necessary to free tobacco from band, but more fragile leaves are less fortunate. The fate of Cameroon and Connecticut-wrapped cigars is practically in the hands of a well-placed band. It becomes like defusing a bomb, requiring surgical-grade accuracy in order to enter the cigar’s final third unscathed.

Nick Perdomo, Jr., owner of Perdomo Cigars, contends that a band should be removed when the burn line is roughly an eighth of an inch away from the paper. This allows the heat from the cigar’s embers to warm the band’s glue, making for more painless band removals. It’s tough to argue with this logic, but sadly, only so much can be done to remedy certain bands—those that seem determined to cling to the cigar as if the two were fused at birth. In many cigars’ cases, this is because they were. Glues from the band intermingle with pectin glue on the leaf and become locked into the material of the band. And when bands are made from porous, cotton-like paper—well, let’s just say you’re in for a battle.

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