Boneshaker

In Estelí, with the help of the famous Oliva family (suppliers of cigar leaf to everyone who’s anyone since 1934), Omar Ortez has created the original Boneshaker cigar. The Boneshaker is not one of these new “limited editions” that seem to come out every week in a never-ending stream of launches, where the hype is that only a thousand boxes of 10 have been produced. No, the only thing limited about the Boneshaker is the number of cigar smokers who can tackle one of these monsters.

Now, some of you long-time JR customers are really savvy about cigars, but for those of you who need a littl...e tutorial on what makes a cigar strong or mellow, let me throw just a few facts out there for you to digest.

The strength of a cigar is not solely a factor of the tobaccos used to create it, it is also greatly dependent on the length and ring size of the cigar. If you were to take a draw on a short, slender cigar, you would be pulling oxygen-rich air though a very small opening a comparatively short distance. The end of the cigar will glow bright red, and the smoke entering your mouth will be extremely hot; the heat of the smoke creates the illusion of strength. Conversely, the very same draw through a large ring-gauge cigar, where oxygen-rich air is being channeled through a much greater opening and through a greater length, will produce a much crisper smoke and the illusion of being substantially mellower. I am 100% sure that all of you have noticed that the second half of every cigar you have ever smoked in your lifetime has been bolder, sometimes so bold as to be offensive or unsmokable. That is because, regardless of the original length of the cigar, in the second half it is shorter and the heat that reaches your palate is getting progressively hotter along with a buildup of tars that were filtered from the combustion of the first half of the cigar.

It is no easy feat to create a blend that provides maximum strength from the initial lighting of the cigar in 54, 56, and 60 ring gauges, yet does not become impossibly bitter in the second half. It was only through the Oliva family that tobaccos that met this criterion could be sourced, as they are without question the end-all and be-all when it comes to supplying the proper materials for a revolutionary product like this.