Say what you want about Privada, but I love what Brian Desind is doing, especially with his Rare Box subscription. Look beyond the goofy cigar names and his bombastic personality. He’s giving members a chance to smoke cigars with years of age on them.
No one else does this.
Most manufacturers certainly don’t. They face sales and inventory pressures to get their cigars to market. Luckily for us, at least non-Cuban cigars are ready to smoke when they leave the factory. After a little rest to acclimate them to our environment, we can enjoy them.
But I love the Rare Box subscription because it answers this question: cigars may be ready to smoke after a little rest, but what are they like with even more age?
Aging cigars yourself takes patience, space, and enough self-control to leave them alone. The Rare Box gives me a chance to explore what years of rest have done to different blends without having to put every one of them away myself.
Take a look at the image to the left. That’s the result of eight years of aging. Look at the color of the cellophane. It’s as dark as cola. The cigar itself was only okay, which is the risk with the Rare Box. While most of the cigars I’ve received have been great, there are some, like the Übermut, that were less than stellar.
But it wasn’t the cigar that intrigued me. It was the dark color of the cellophane.
For years, I’d accepted that oils working their way out of the tobacco wrapper stained the cellophane through direct contact. But the bottom third of this cigar was wrapped in a paper sleeve. If surface oils were responsible for the staining, the cellophane covering that paper sleeve should have been much lighter than the rest.
Furthermore, the underside of the paper sleeve should have been stained. But as you can see in the photo, neither the black paper nor the RFID tag shows any evidence of staining.
That got me thinking about what causes the cellophane to discolor.
So I did some digging. I didn’t find any experimental evidence specifically related to staining on cigar cellophane. But I did find studies on what tobacco releases into the air and how cellophane absorbs organic vapors.
A 2016 study examined nicotine released by Burley, flue-cured, and Oriental tobaccos, along with cigarette blends. Researchers collected vapor from the space around the unlit tobacco using a chemical trap, then measured how much nicotine it contained. These were measurable emissions from tobacco sitting in storage.
A 2024 study looked at cigar wrapper, binder, and filler tobacco and identified 90 different compounds in the air above the samples. The list included compounds also found in plant essential oils, along with compounds chemically related to fats.
Then there’s the cellophane itself.
In a 1994 packaging study, researchers exposed cellophane to water vapor and an aroma compound carried in a gas stream. The film absorbed some of the aroma compound, but very little passed through to the other side. Water vapor passed through readily.
An organic compound could therefore enter the cellophane from the surrounding vapor while its passage through the film remained strongly restricted. Being absorbed by the film and passing through it are two different things. The diagram below illustrates the findings of the research and how vapors could move in a wrapped cigar.
This provides a route for tobacco compounds to reach cellophane along the length of a cigar. The molecules spread through the airspace, encounter the film, and some are absorbed by it. The paper sleeve at the foot leaves that route available.
That’s the explanation I’m proposing for the discoloration. Over time, material released by the cigar accumulates in the film. The cellophane around the paper-covered foot is exposed to those vapors just like the rest of the sleeve. The molecules can travel around the paper and reach the cellophane without leaving a stain on the paper’s underside.
What I can’t tell you is what conditions are needed for that staining to occur. I have vintage cigars whose cellophane hasn’t stained at all. So there’s clearly more to it than time. The research describes how compounds can reach and enter the film, but it doesn’t tell me why one sleeve turns cola-colored while another stays clear.
Not knowing why some sleeves stain and others don’t leaves that question open. But the research has also made me rethink what we mean by “tobacco oils.” The compounds identified in the cigar study included constituents of essential oils, fatty-acid esters, and a fatty alcohol. That’s a range of substances with different properties. Describing all of them as oil slowly seeping out of a wrapper leaves out the possibility of transfer through the air.
And this is where the discussion starts to overlap with aging.
We tend to think about cellophane in terms of protection and humidity. Those are practical concerns, but the film also interacts with compounds released by the tobacco. Water vapor can pass through readily, while some organic compounds are absorbed and their passage is restricted.
That leaves me wondering what happens to the cigar while those compounds remain in its immediate surroundings. How does that environment compare with the one around a cigar aging without cellophane?
With unwrapped cigars, aroma compounds can spread through the humidor’s shared airspace. Each cigar contributes to that atmosphere and is exposed to what the others release. It makes sense that the cigars could influence one another, as some of those compounds are taken up by neighboring cigars.
There’s research on that movement, too. A 1997 study of cigarette storage examined how added flavor compounds moved among tobacco, paper, filters, and packaging. The compounds entered the air inside the package and were taken up by the different materials. Tobacco could both release those compounds and take them up from its surroundings.
Cellophane adds a barrier to that exchange. It can restrict the movement of some compounds leaving the cigar, as well as compounds approaching it from elsewhere in the humidor.
So even when cigars share the same humidor and humidity, their exposure to those compounds can differ. An unwrapped cigar is directly exposed to the shared atmosphere. A cigar in cellophane has a film around it that interacts with some of those molecules and slows their movement.
With cellophane on, some of the compounds released by the cigar could also be reabsorbed by the wrapper. The film slows the escape of certain compounds, keeping them near the tobacco. As those molecules move through the space inside the sleeve, some can be absorbed by the cellophane, and others can be taken up again by the leaf. The cigar can therefore release compounds into its surroundings and take some of them back in during storage.
This brings me back to something I wrote in To Cello or Not to Cello?. I didn’t buy into the familiar claim that unwrapped cigars age faster. I suggested that they age differently. The research discussed here reinforces that suggestion.
Those are merely different conditions for aging.
A cigar that loses some of its original aroma or picks up something from its neighbors may taste noticeably different. But does that mean it has aged faster? Calling it faster aging assumes both cigars are headed toward the same result, with one getting there sooner.
Cellophane gives us a reason to question that assumption.
It allows some compounds through while strongly restricting others, affecting both what escapes and what reaches the cigar from its neighbors. That means a different mix of compounds is available to the tobacco during aging. Giving a wrapped cigar more time doesn’t recreate the exposure of an unwrapped cigar. More time under one set of conditions is not equivalent to aging under another.
I want to be clear that I am not suggesting that leaving the cellophane on is better. It’s a choice. You may enjoy what develops when cigars share the humidor’s atmosphere, or you may prefer to limit that exchange by leaving the cellophane on.
There is no right or wrong in this.
As for that deeply stained cellophane, it’s yet another thing that fascinates me about writing the Stogie Diary. I constantly worry about running out of subjects other than reviews. But then I notice something like that, and the next thing I know, I’m diving down a rabbit hole trying to understand what I’m observing.
With all that cigars and the culture have to offer, I don’t think I’m in any danger of running out of material to write about.
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