AN EXPERT GUIDE TO CIGARS

JULY 2017 WORDS BY MR NICHOLAS FOULKES

Mr Marcel Duchamp in France, 1967. Photograph by Mr Bruno Barbey/Magnum Photos

We have Mr Oscar Wilde. The US has Mr Mark Twain, at least in terms of witty apothegms. My favourite? “If smoking is not allowed in heaven, I shall not go.” Mr Twain was not a man who smoked to excess – only one cigar at a time, he was careful to point out – but the inference is clear enough: heaven is a cigar.

Cigars are a degustatory delight, instruments of pleasure that soothe the jangled nerves, knit the ravelled sleeve of care and… all that sort of thing. It is impossible not to feel slightly better about life with a cigar in the hand. It is one of life’s great consolations and has about as much in common with a hurried cigarette snatched outside an office as a can of extra-strength lager has with a magnum of Château Pétrus. Read more…

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