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The Art of Cigar Pairing with Ferio Tego's Michael Herklots
I'm joined today by Michael Herklots of Ferio Tego Cigars. We were able to chat a bit about the art of cigar pairing and how to approach making your own pairings, whether that be with spirits, coffee, or any other drink of choice.
Note: The following transcription has been edited for clarity and brevity.
[Tyler Caldwell]: In your opinion, what is the perfect pairing for a cigar?
[Michael Herklots]: You used a very specific word, which is pairing, and for me, pairing means that you are taking two things that are perfectly consumable alone and you're putting them together in such a way that it creates a flavor and experience that is better together than it was separately. It's very important to have a great awareness of the item you're pairing so you can better understand the cigar.
Let's say we're talking about a beverage. You can pair a cigar with anything. You can pair it with coffee, soft drinks, juice, really any drink in the world, but you have to understand the characteristics and behavior of it.
Black coffee, for example, has two experiences to pay attention to: temperature, which is hot, and flavors, which are bitter and that skew darker. To pair with that, you're going to want to find a cigar that will counter the temperature, which means that you probably want something larger format, slightly thicker ring gauge, and/or longer in length.
Therefore, the smoke is cooler when it hits your palate. And then, from a flavor perspective, you either want to match the flavor, so it's coffee and coffee, which could be something with Nicaraguan tobacco that shares a lot of the characteristics of coffee, such as our Timeless Supreme Generoso, or you could counter it and fill in the blanks, paint by numbers, so to speak, on the palate.
If the coffee is hot and is skewing toward that darker, earthier, more savory flavor profile that coffee tends to have, you could counter that with creamier, nuttier, breadier-type flavors. Honestly, coffee and cigars go hand-in-hand, no problem.
When you get into alcohol, which is quite a common accompaniment, people tend to jump into the brown liquors: cognacs, scotches, bourbons, et cetera. The challenge with pairing high-alcohol spirits with something as nuanced as smoke is that the alcohol always wins. Now, that's not to say that smoking your favorite tobacco and drinking your favorite whiskey is not a great accompaniment. It makes for a great night, but it's not necessarily pairing.
I say that because if you were to take a puff of your favorite pipe or cigar and then you take a sip of your favorite whiskey, particularly neat, what you will find is the flavor of the whiskey dominates the palate and replaces the flavor and nuance of the tobacco. But if you approach it the opposite way by sipping the whiskey first and allowing it to coat your palate, you'll notice two things: First, the high-alcohol spirit always presents as hot, and second, the high-alcohol spirits will always dominate the palate, erase any flavor that was there before, and also create an astringent dry effect on the palate because of the ferocity of the alcohol.
After you've sipped the high-alcohol spirit, then take a puff of your favorite cigar or pipe, you'll experience two incredible changes on your palate: First, you'll feel an immediate reduction in temperature. And second, you will feel the restoration of saliva, which is crazy that the wet thing is hot and dries your mouth, and the thing that's burning cools the palate and restores saliva.
But what that does is it allows the dominant component to layer first, and then the nuanced one, the gas of the cigar smoke, can layer above, and that grants the opportunity to pair your favorite pipe or cigar with high-alcohol spirits.
[TC]: That's a format that I never personally thought of. To me, with whatever beverage I'm drinking, I'm mainly thinking of how it's interacting with the cigar I'm pairing it with. And sometimes you get that perfect combination, but I've never thought of it to that extent, but that's super important.
[MH]: And it's important to think about pairing no different than you would pair a wine with a main dish at a great restaurant.
The general rule of thumb that we have been brought up on is that you should pair red meat with red wine, and white meat with white wine. That's not because of the color, it's because of the relationship of body, acid, and tannin.
Typically, red meat is fatty, and so you cut the savoriness of the fat with an older wine that is drier and more tannic. White meats that are leaner tend to skew drier, and so then you would look for a more unctuous white wine that can help counter the slightly drier, more delicate white meat, but there are also exceptions, which is why you can have Pinot Noir with turkey and Chardonnay with a steak, for example.
The key is to make sure that you are creating the opportunity for dialogue and that, in a perfect pairing, if you think about wine and food, one does not necessarily dominate. They are designed to pair and create dialogue, one after the other after the other. Frankly, lower-alcohol beverages, wines, and beers, and non-alcoholic beverages are a much easier pairing because they are able to play on the same level and create more of those equal layers of dialogue from smoke to sip.
[TC]: Very interesting. What about your perspective of those who don't drink those beverages? I find there are some people who like sparkling water. What are the benefits of sparkling water with a cigar?
[MH]: Sparkling water is an accompaniment, but it's not a pairing. What a non-flavored beverage allows is to help balance the condition of the palate without changing at all the flavor and the development of a blend. So, it is a perfectly acceptable accompaniment, especially when you are trying to focus solely on the unique characteristics of the cigar itself. Enjoying a handmade premium cigar with a flavorless beverage really puts the spotlight on the cigar and allows it to be the star of the show.
[TC]: Great. We'll wrap it up here for today. Let us know in the comments what your favorite pairing is with some Ferio Tego cigars.
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Comments
Great explanation!
This probably the best explanation of what a flavor pairing is and isn’t that I’ve ever heard. Now I know exactly why grabbing for the whisky with my smoke always disappointed and leaves my palate totally fatigued. Seems good in theory but never in practice. I didn’t think to intentional reverse the order though for a different experience. I would assume drinking water to cleanse the pallet between the smoke and the high proof spirit would be essential in enjoying a full session.