I had the recent opportunity to sit down with Michael Herklots of Ferio Tego Cigars to discuss the portfolio and the distinct differences between the strength, body, mouthfeel, and intensity in cigars and how to select your cigar for your particular palate and preferences. Hopefully, you can learn something new, whether you're new to cigar smoking or are a seasoned pro.

[Tyler Caldwell]: Thank you so much for coming to hang out with us, Michael.

[Michael Herklots]: Thank you for having me. It's gonna be a lot of fun.

[TC]: I gotta say it, right off the bat, Summa is an excellent cigar. It's very nuanced and very flavorful at the same time. It's a balance of a classic cigar with what a luxurious cigar would be.

[MH]: Thank you. It's a blend that we're super proud of. It's been very hot since launch, and we're gonna keep it as consistent as we can.

[TC]: Very cool. One thing I love about something that's new to me is that I get the privilege of expanding my knowledge, and that I can teach someone something about the hobby that I love so much.

[MH]: Yeah. When you're a retailer, that to me is the most valuable piece in the ecosystem of the premium cigar world. They are the most influential, they're the most passionate, and they have the most effective ability to explain and share the moment of discovery. There's nothing more exciting than when a retailer discovers something that they think someone else will love, and they connect those dots for somebody. That's the thing I miss the most about not being in retail now.

[TC]: What would you say would be something that has always been slightly difficult for a customer to understand when it comes to trying to educate them a little further into what we love here?

[MH]: It's difficult today to be comfortable just being a consumer. There's so much pressure to be an expert, and I think that diminishes the fun of being a consumer. The pressure to drill deeper into something, which is not necessary for enjoyment, with external pressure from social media, from our social circles, to demonstrate our expertise as publicly as possible — the consequence of that is the erosion of just pure enjoyment.

Distinctions Between Strength vs. Body

[MH]: I think what's important is for the retailer to know as much information as possible, but to use a tremendous amount of discretion as far as what they're going to share with the consumer because the reality is the priming and geography of the filler doesn't make a single difference to the consumer's ability to enjoy it. By knowing some of that information and then being able to convey what that might mean in terms of strength or body or balance or impact or behavior, you are able to give the most important information with the least amount of information possible.

[TC]: I absolutely agree with that. I've always found one of the harder things to understand is the difference between what strength means in terms of flavor, body, actual nicotine strength, and so on.

[MH]: Yeah, of course. First, we tend to conflate body with all of the other things, like strength, mouthfeel, and intensity. Body is mouthfeel, and body is specific to the weight of the smoke and the texture of the smoke on your palate.

Full-bodied means that the smoke is mouth-fillingly dense and weighty. A medium body is suggesting that the weight, mouthfeel, and intensity of the smoke itself are lighter than full. Light-bodied is thinner.

I think of body almost like milk: skim milk, whole milk, heavy cream. You're creating either density or lightness across that spectrum. For the body of the smoke, it is exactly the same.

Then you add strength. Strength can be divided into two categories: Strength as far as intensity of flavor and the concentration of flavor, and then on the other side is intensity of the way that cigar physically makes you feel and the strength of the tobacco itself.

If we're talking about intensity of flavor, you can have a cigar that has a very intense, obvious, and direct flavor, but might have a lighter body, and you can also have cigars that are very full and mouth-fillingly rich in body, but have lighter, more graceful flavors.

We tend to just lump them all into the same thing and say, I like something full-bodied. But what you might actually be saying is that you want something more intense in flavor.

Then we have room to play on the body scale. On the flip side of that, to say that you like something that is mild or mellow, if we can drill down and understand what you mean in terms of mild or mellow as flavor, or as intensity, then we can also ramp up the body and experience that mouth fillingly full body with lighter, brighter, smoother flavors.

[TC]: Absolutely. I think the comparison with milk was spot on. It's something I've never actually thought of using. I'm gonna steal that from you.

[MH]: Steal it. Fabric is the other one I like to compare body to. I think of it like silky all the way to velvety. You have all this different room to play where fabric is fabric: you have linen, then silk, and then cotton, and then everything just becomes thicker and denser until you have this velvet, rich, heavy thing.

Ferio Tego Cigars

[TC]: To go along with this topic of body, with a portfolio like the one for Ferio Tego, where would you put each of your products? Let's go from light to full-bodied, from your perspective.

[MH]: First, I think it's important to understand my style as an artist. I tend to really push body to every extent I can, particularly with my newest work. I really love to create a big, unctuous, mouth-filling body and then create different flavors and experiences on top of that.

The newest blends are our namesake, which is the Ferio Tego brand, and we have Elegancia and Generoso, which we do once a year, and then Summa, which we do throughout the year. All three of them are monstrously full in body.

I describe Summa as fudgy. It has a mouth feel that's so rich and so decadent, but it absolutely has this creamy feeling and texture, yet the flavors are anything but the flavors that you would associate with creamy-style cigars: the bready, nutty, woody flavors. This skews much more coffee, chocolate, leather, earth, and espresso; those more savory flavors. Summa is full-bodied, tempered strength, and flavors that skew more dark, rich, and dense.

If you look at our two annual limited releases, the Elegancia is as creamy as it looks. I tend to describe this like crème brûlée. If you think of crème brûlée, it's mouth-fillingly full, not overly sweet necessarily, but the body is so rich, full, and delicious. You also have that kind of creamy vanilla honey deliciousness, but you also have that toffee caramel top, and that's really what you get with Elegancia, particularly as you smoke it through from start to finish. Just that journey of flavor.

Generoso is the brother of Elegancia. This one has a spicier, more old-world, fuller, richer, earthier vibe, but still has that same mouthfeel that is round and full.

All three of these I would consider very full in body. The Generoso and the Summa, medium in strength. The Elegancia, milder in strength, but flavor is very generous across all three.

[TC]: Absolutely. Out of this world.

Timeless Collection & Metropolitan Selection

[MH]: The Timeless Collection lives in the medium-to-full range in body, whether you're talking about the shade-wrap Sterling all the way up to our box-pressed Nicaraguan puro Supreme. They, too, share a richness and a complexity of flavor.

The Metropolitan Selection is a much older world, a more nostalgic style of cigar. Some of the blends date back to the mid '90s in the style of the American market at the time, which favored lighter body, more straightforward, less nuance and complexity, and more consistent from start to finish.

When you look at the Metropolitan Selection, those are medium-bodied and the flavors across the board skew lighter and more tempered.

Suggestions For New Cigar Smokers

[TC]: Awesome, man. There's a lot to say when it comes to cigars, especially when you're going into the topic of body. It's important to really just do your homework and try to understand it to the best of your palate. We can sit here and say this is how you designed the cigar to be. I think it's important for anyone who's watching this and who's interested in a topic like this to understand your terminology. This is a great stepping stone for someone to understand their own palate better.

[MH]: I think it's always important to try and separate your topics as widely as possible. If you're looking for one thing, you are probably looking for three things. If you can segregate those, it's like a mixing board. You have lows, mids, and highs. The ability to move all of those things together is what really allows you to customize and fine-tune what you like and what you don't.

I would encourage everyone to think more thoughtfully and specifically about each low, mid, and high. Think body over here. Think flavor intensity here. Think intensity and ferocity of the blend and the way it makes you feel over here, and start to figure out what you like and what you don't, because that provides retailers with much more helpful information as far as how to make a recommendation moving forward.

[TC]: Absolutely, I couldn't agree more. What are some suggestions you would have for the new cigar smoker?

[MH]: Well, I think there's a big difference today when we think of new consumers of handmade premium cigars versus new consumers of complex taste and flavor. So many people today discover the hobby later in life that the idea of where to begin has evolved greatly.

When I started in the industry, it made sense that you started in the milder, lighter, creamier, maybe sweeter, and flavored or infused area because that was the most approachable place to begin or enter the hobby. However, when you look at how many people discover this hobby later, whether it's from other things that they taste in smoke or other things that they may taste drinking and eating, our palates have evolved in such a way that starts so much earlier that now it's much more important to understand the things that you already like. It's more important to ask the most provocative questions.

For example, you could ask someone if they like coffee, and if they do, how do they like their coffee? If they don't like coffee, well, that tells you not only do they not like the flavor of coffee, but they may not like hot drinks or hot things at all, or they may not like bitter things. That creates an opportunity to meet them where they are.

Now, if they do like coffee, how do they like it? Do they take it with cream? Do they have cream and sugar? Do they have just sugar? All of those things are cues to understand the flavors and feelings of things that they already like in things that they already love. Then you can start placing them with products they will probably enjoy. For example, do you like coffee? Yes, I do. How do you drink it? I drink it light and sweet with cream and sugar, then you like the flavor of coffee, but you also prefer it creamed out because black is obviously too bitter, and you also like things that are sweet. That opens up a world for creamy and mellow, like Elegancia, sweeter and milder like Metropolitan Host. If you drink coffee black with sugar, maybe the Metropolitan Host Maduro might be something for you.

The same comparisons work with alcohol. If you drink alcohol, what do you like to drink? Do you drink whiskey? Do you drink wine? Do you drink beer? What types do you like? If you drink beer, but you hate IPA, that's a really helpful bit of information. If you like all of it, that's also helpful because it means that if you drink espresso in the afternoon and cappuccino in the morning, white wine with a light dish, and you like red wine with steak and whiskey after dinner, now you have such a broad palate that your palate is more developed than you are giving credit to. Then you can ask, what would you be in the mood for right now? That's what gives you the cue to say, for example, if you were in the mood for a really peaty Islay Scotch Whiskey right now, let's go with a full-bodied, earthy, rich, dense smoke, which would be a Generoso.

[TC]: Absolutely. Coming from the retail world, that was always one of the questions I would always ask is, not what are you looking for, but what are you in the mood for?

[MH]: It's also important because a new consumer doesn't always understand the underlying criteria of what makes a particular cigar one way or another. Whether it's size and format, length versus ring gauge, all of those different relationships create different experiences in a cigar. Someone new to the hobby won't have to make the mistake of choosing, for example, the smallest, thinnest, daintiest thing to try. That would be a mistake. It will be the hottest, most intense, ferocious experience of that particular blend.

It's really important to be able to ask the most thoughtful questions so you can demonstrate to the consumer how to interpret what they are already familiar with in the things they already love, and then apply it to this new hobby.

[TC]: Absolutely, 100% agree.