Unco B's Stogie Diary

You may have noticed that I use a lot of metaphors in my writing. I do it to give myself a visual reference to speak about when describing a cigar or relating an experience.

Flavor notes are useful, but they only go so far. They tell us what showed up. They don’t always tell us how the cigar moved, how it carried itself, or what kind of personality emerged while I was smoking it.

That’s where metaphors help.

This morning, I was re-reading my review of the La Aurora Family Creed Fuerte Sol. In the review, I used Captain America as a metaphor for how the cigar represents La Aurora’s reformulation and repositioning in the industry.

And then it hit me.

Wouldn’t it be fun if I built a superhero roster out of cigars?

The operative word here is fun. I’ve been writing so many serious foundational pieces and reviews lately that I needed to have a little fun. Below is a roster of cigars I came up with, along with their superhero counterparts.

That’s the fun of metaphors.

They let us play with the experience. They let a cigar become more than the sum of its parts for a few minutes. A wrapper, binder, and filler can turn into a posture, a mood, a character, a whole little story forming in the smoke.

And honestly, that’s part of why I love cigars.

They give us room to imagine.

One person sees Captain America. Another sees Batman. Someone else might see a jazz musician, a boxer, a chef, or a storm rolling over the horizon. None of that changes the cigar. But it changes how we talk about it. It opens the experience up instead of flattening it into a checklist.

So light a cigar.

See who shows up.