Cigar Aficionado

“The Oversized Cigar Trend” was the name of the seminar, but it might just as well have been subtitled “Does This Cigar Make My Hand Look Skinny,” the smokes were of such behemoth size.

Managing editor Gregory Mottola introduced the topic, which has seen the girth of cigars swell to elephantine proportions in recent years, with visual aids. One by one, he held up an example of the cigars that the audience had been given to smoke during the seminar, while posing the question: “How did we get to this point?”

The first, the Casa Carrillo Inch Natural No. 62 at 5 inches by 62 ring gauge looked like a handful at almost an inch in circumference. But it was quickly outmuscled by Room101’s The Big Payback 70s at 7 by 70. In turn, the third cigar dwarfed all contenders. At 9 inches long by an eye-popping 90 ring gauge, the Asylum April Fools looked in its red paper packaging like it could have been a stick of dynamite.

“We hold Mr. Perez-Carillo responsible for the trend,” Mottola jokingly chided the maker of the first cigar who was joined on the panel by Christian Eiroa of C.L.E. Cigars and Matt Booth of Room101 Cigars. In 1997, Carrillo introduced the La Gloria Cubana Serie R line, but didn’t make the brand in a 60 ring gauge until 2001—one of the forerunners of the wide-ring-gauge trend. He subsequently sold the company, later creating Casa Carrillo (then called E.P.C. Cigar Co.) and debuted the Inch line, named for an approximation of the cigar’s circumference. That 2012 introduction, Mottola said, coincided with Cigar Aficionado creating a new category—Grandes—in its review section. This way, the magazine could better accommodate the growing trend of oversized cigars. Booth’s Big Pay Back quickly followed in 2014. Ten years later, Mottola said, Eiroa dropped “a hydrogen bomb.” 

At first, the discussion took a jocular approach, given the outsized smokes at hand and the seeming arms race to outdo each other in size. But levity aside, the cigar makers concurred that there is a place for the format.

Perez-Carrillo explained that the Serie R reached the 60-ring-gauge mark because his company was overstocked with tobacco at the time and he needed to find a way to use it, while at the same time he was bored with making cigars at 40 ring gauge.

Booth added there is a serious demand for such cigars, saying, “I don’t believe they are taken as a novelty. There is a very real market for them. As the enchantment with engagement continued to swell, we answered the call of consumers worldwide.”

Eiroa said that the Asylum was originally created as a sort of challenge to see if a cigar that large could be made, “but it really caught on.” He added that the introduction of new tobacco strains made the cigar possible. “We couldn’t have done this 20 years ago. The wrapper leaves weren’t big enough. To make this cigar you take the same tobacco and multiply by six.” 

Large-format cigars come with certain advantages, said Carrillo. “You have so much more tobacco to work with, you can blend for more complexity in the cigar. You’re not smoking them for the size, but for the taste.”

Eiroa pointed out that there is perceived added value in larger formats, remarking that truck drivers measure their cigars by how far they can go with one smoke, two to three hours being the goal.

“We have a sense of humor about it,” Eiroa said, pointing out that they use the April Fool’s edition for longest ash contests.

Mottola wrapped by polling the audience as to how many had lit up the nine-inch, 90-ring-gauge cigar. No one had taken the dare. Then again, the seminar only lasted 30 minutes, hardly enough time for any of these smokes.

The Big Smoke will return to Las Vegas next fall, November 6 and 7, 2026. Save the date.

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