Components of a cigar

Cigars are essentially made of 3 different parts, the filler, binder and wrapper. Each one of them have distinct types of tobacco, from various parts of the plant, and blended together creates a unique flavor.

Filler

The fillers are the leaves in the center of a cigars body, is folded to add flavor and strength to the cigar. There are a few types of leafs used, such as volado, color, seco, and ligero. Usually good cigars has between two and five different types of tobacco.

BINDER

The Binder is a tobacco leaf that holds together the filler making sure that the cigar burns correctly and evenly. It is usually the lowest grade of tobacco in the cigar, and sometimes binders were grown with the purpose of being wrappers, but imperfections in the leaf caused them to be classified as binders. Even though its not the most flavorful part of the cigar, it can be used as a smoother flavor to counterbalance the intense taste of the filler.

Wrapper

Wrapper leaves are harvested from the lower sections of the tobacco plant, where they are large and dense. These are normally the highest-quality tobacco leaf due to around 40% of the cigars flavor comes from the
wrapper, so growers make an extra effort to develop and conserve them to reach the ideal flavor. The color of wrappers varies from very light (Double Claro) to very dark brown (Oscuro), with some variations coming in green.