Do cigars get darker as they age?

[torrenfoot]

I don’t know if I’m tripping, but I’m pretty sure these sticks weren’t this dark when I first got them. Is cigars getting darker the older they get, a thing?

 

Merry Christmas xoxo

 

 

 

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[NSXCIGAR]

Can't say I've ever heard of that phenomenon...

You may indeed be tripping. Enjoy it and stay on the ground floor of any buildings. 

[cigcars]

  * I haven't noticed mine getting darker - and some have been aging for years...same shade, same wrapper color - 

[Ethernut]

Nope not unless there’s some external factor

[OZCUBAN]

In a word NO what you see is what you get, the flavours may change over time for better of worse ,but have never seen a wrapper improve 

cheers 

[Customsfan]

Aliens?

[torrenfoot]

I must be tripping!! Thanks for the reassurance guys Haha


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[zappaFREAK]

Enjoy the journey!

[kalibratecuba]

Don't forget to breathe.

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[BrightonCorgi]

Can oxidation of the wrappers darken them over time?  I suppose, but I don't think enough for you to notice and you'd need a reference cigar to be sure.  

There have been studies that show eye witness testimony is not as reliable as one thinks.  What we believe we saw can be wrong quite often.

[mk05]

16 hours ago, torrenfoot said:

I don’t know if I’m tripping, but I’m pretty sure these sticks weren’t this dark when I first got them. Is cigars getting darker the older they get, a thing?

Sometimes. This is an age-old observation to the older generation of smokers.

[Doctorossi]

39 minutes ago, mk05 said:

Sometimes. This is an age-old observation to the older generation of smokers.

I'd like to study the correlation between reports of darkening wrappers and the decrease in visual acuity brought on by age.  

[NSXCIGAR]

11 hours ago, Customsfan said:

Aliens?

I have no doubt we will eventually discover that we have been visited by aliens who's only mission is to insert anal probes and make our cigars darker. Now that I think about it, the two could be related...

[Doctorossi]

1 minute ago, NSXCIGAR said:

I have no doubt we will eventually discover that we have been visited by aliens who's only mission is to insert anal probes and make our cigars darker. Now that I think about it, the two could be related...

That explains a lot.

[Fugu]

[cigaraholic]

Call me crazy...most people do...I find that darker wrappered cigars tend to lose a little color over the years and lighter wrappers tend to get darker. I also find some lighter wrapper brands..PL, QdO, Cohiba tend to gain strength as they age and darker wrappers cigars always mellow....like I said...call me crazy.

[BrightonCorgi]

1 hour ago, cigaraholic said:

Call me crazy...most people do...I find that darker wrappered cigars tend to lose a little color over the years and lighter wrappers tend to get darker. 

Sounds like wine as they age.

[earthson]

I've had it happen! I just finished a LUB MAY 14 box of HUPC received from here back in '15. When the box came, I was a little disappointed because the wrappers were colorado Claro with tinges of green. By mid 2016, I opened the box and was floored - the wrappers had become noticeably darker (colorado+) and the green color was gone! They weren't the colorado maduro to rosado wrappers I've come to appreciate on HUPC, but they surely improved.

Only time I ever witnessed that.

[Fugu]

4 hours ago, cigaraholic said:

Call me crazy...most people do...I find that darker wrappered cigars tend to lose a little color over the years and lighter wrappers tend to get darker.

Nothing farther from me than calling you crazy - but the issue here is exactly this, the "finding" instead of objectively evaluating, i.e. "knowing".

Thing is - as the Corgi @BrightonCorgi above already mentions, an observer (yup, even a long-standing, experienced "older-generation" smoker...) would need to have some reference to compare it with. The human eye is not capable of judging shade or/and tonality or light intensities on an absolute scale. Not possible! Therefore, such claims are nothing less than anecdotal myth - as long as not based on a comparison to a colour chart for reference.

[Hint: That pretty famous experiment posted above is displaying a bar with uniform shade and brightness from one end to the other. Cover up the background for a check.]

[cigaraholic]

Thank god I’m at least an older generation cigar smoker?...much as I hate to say it...but being in the wine business all my aldult life, having a mother who was an artist and being a bit of an artist myself, color and hue are very important to me. I’m not a scientist but I think oxidation has some effect on wrapper color...

[Pharmacovigilant]

I’ve had some cigars get a bit smaller (thinner and slightly shorter) as they aged beyond 5 years, and this is more noticeable on the larger vitolas, but no color change. 

[Smallclub]

On 12/26/2017 at 8:42 PM, mk05 said:

Sometimes. This is an age-old observation to the older generation of smokers.

The "jar effect". In the late 90's there was a fashion (in western Europe) that consisted of giving a "finish" to the cigars, a few days before consuming them, by putting them in a humidified jar, preferably a nice porcelain one bought from a famous vendor in Geneva…

I sometimes do it with my Piedra and it definitely darkens and smoothes the wrappers.

[luv2fly]

Fugu, that was very interesting.  I did it 4 times to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.?

Thanks for the post!

[Fugu]

On 2.1.2018 at 2:30 AM, cigaraholic said:

being in the wine business all my aldult life, having a mother who was an artist and being a bit of an artist myself, color and hue are very important to me.

Its importance is not in question here, I guess.

Let me put it this way: I would never dismiss that colour changes couldn't theoretically and also practically occur to a certain extent. But in years, I can't say I've ever witnessed it. What I've had were e.g. sticks showing a greenish tinge on one day, and in a different light displaying the nicest colorado-cl on another occasion (in particular Cohiba wrappers are exemplary for that).

Our visual senses are playing tricks on us. Amongst other effects (see above for an example), mainly due to our ability to chromatically adapt - which essentially is a good thing, aiding us in an automatic white point compensation (white balancing). That's why we need to speak of colour 'appearance'. While it helps us to always perceive a similar colour impression even under changing lighting conditions, on a finer scale it hinders us to objectively determine colour and tonality in absolute terms. Therefore you (read: we, human) always need a reference (like a grey- or colour-chart) for 'groundtruthing' your subjective sensation for an exact evaluation (same holding for taste for that matter, sweet and salty being the brightest examples of short-term adaptation, with exposure resulting in changes in the sensitivity thereof. An effect well known in the wine biz ). Also, there is an influence of light intensity on human colour vision (see e.g. Purkinje effect and Bezold-Bruecke shift). There are physiological reasons for it. As an artist's kid you will surely be aware that lighting, contrast and background (complementarity) and even visual context have a huge influence here.

What surely happens, and what Smallclub points to, is cigars changing their appearance due to humidification and aging ('oiliness', suppleness, surface texture and reflectiveness etc.). This all may also lead to a particular tonality impression. Furthermore, cigars which are kept openly, exposed to light are getting paler (bleaching irreversibly that is...) - and such can happen pretty quickly if there is either direct or indirect sunlight or a light source with a spectrum rich in UV (so, careful with permanent (LED-)illumination and open display, folks!). Comparing such sticks later with their brethren kept protected in their box will make the ones in the box look darker.

[garnett]

I have some boxes of Monte 2 that have gone through an amazing color change (to the darker) and a box of PSP Por Larranaga  Belicoso Extra Asia Pacifico with motteled wrappers that have changed to almost black in places.