Remember that scene in Robin Hood: Men in Tights, where Little John dukes it out with Cary Elwes on that dinky-ass bridge over an equally diminutive creek? As the two men’s flimsy fighting staves diminish in size, their attack techniques are altered, ultimately resulting in a splinter-filled game of "Pluck." 

Premium long-filler cigars are quite similar in many ways. The shape, size, and styles of cigar types (or vitola, as it is called in Spanish) can significantly affect the smoking experience, especially when a beefier ring gauge is present. For instance, smoking a premium cigar blend with a hulking Gordo ring gauge can be very different from puffing on a paper-thin Portofino. 

This gives cause to a very good question. To what extent does a cigar's circumference affect flavor and intensity?

Klaro's Best-Selling Large Ring-Gauge Cigars

Cohiba Riviera Perfecto

CAO Pilon Anejo

PDR 1878 Sun Grown

Oscar Valladares Super Fly

JFR Lunatic Habano

JFR Lunatic Maduro

Asylum Premium

La Gloria Cubana Serie R Esteli Maduro No. 64

Bigger Is Always Better… Right?

Although there has been much speculation over the years as to whether or not the cigar market’s zealous infatuation with enormous ring gauges will continue to grow, a far more serious consideration deserves discussion: Big cigars aren’t for everyone.

Blame it on their unwieldy size, higher price point, intense characteristics, cigar cutter limitations, or jaw-aching circumference, there’s no getting around the downsides that come with large ring gauge cigars.

Burn rate is another concern. On average, the typical 60-ring gauge stogie is going to take at least two to three hours to incinerate every centimeter of tobacco between its foot and cigar band. So you've got to have some serious time set aside for this size of a smoke.  

Then there’s the issue of intensity. Flavorful notes may be more prominent, especially when a double-binder is implemented, but it's the strength of all that nicotine-rich cigar tobacco that warrants the most concern. For more on that tingly topic, see the Deep Dive embedded in the previous sentence. 

You’ve also got heat to consider, for too much will create an intensely acrid or bitter flavor, which is often accompanied by an uncomfortably hot feel from the incendiary smoke striking your palate. Naturally, this has just as much to do with who is doing the puffing, and how intensely/frequently each pull is taken down the barrel and toward those parting puffs.

As the size and intensity of the burning ember determines how potent the flavor and strength of the cigar is, so too does it control temperature. Puff slowly and savor. A sturdy ash will keep the cherry-red cone inside well insulated and will typically prevent a large ring gauge cigar from getting too hot.

Tobacco Nerd Note: Only so much tobacco can be used during the production of most cigar types. This translates to about four leaves being used in total on average. However, a cigar with a larger ring gauge can utilize anywhere from six to eight leaves, thus opening the door to a slew of premium tobacco blending options and a far more complex cigar smoking experience. 

Larger Servings of Everything

Considering that almost all premium cigar blends contain a binder, long-filler, and a wrapper leaf, the different tobacco varietals that are utilized also help determine everything previously discussed.

While the cigar wrapper itself can be attributed to a vast majority of the flavor and aroma detected within a proprietary premium cigar blend, there’s far more to a blend than just those prized outer tobacco leaves.

Thick cigars require much more of everything, with the filler and binder side seeing the most significant increase in content. Some may argue that this dumbs down the overall flavor of the wrapper itself, but we here at Klaro tend to favor a different school of thought.

It’s a simple matter of surface ratio more than anything. Stuff more long-filler into a bulging binder, and you will have to utilize more premium cigar wrapper leaf to encompass all of that fermented fun. This is why we encourage people to smoke multiple sizes of a particular premium cigar blend before writing it off entirely, as the actual vitola itself can determine the taste and intensity.

This has given just cause for almost every cigar manufacturer to stuff some form of 60+ ring gauge smoke into its portfolio, with certain cigar brands even venturing into 80+ ring gauge territory. Hell, things have gotten so out of control, that in 2023 Aganorsa Leaf released the JFR Lunatic Maduro 10x100, which measures 10-inches long with a 100 ring-gauge!

But before all of this massive cigar mania, and the great American Cigar Boom of the 1990s, there was a master blender from Cuba and a bunch of bikers with a sizable request.

Rollin’ Heavy, E.P. Carrillo Style

Ernesto Perez-Carrillo is easily the most recognizable man in the large ring-gauge cigar game, for he was the one responsible for putting big-ring cigars at the forefront of the public’s puffing preferences. 

As the story goes, it all started way back in the 1970s, when Carrillo was contracted to roll a limited-release cigar with an oversized ring gauge for a motorcycle club in California. A 70-ring gauge monolith, the cigar was unlike anything the tobacco market had ever seen and stands as one of the first times in history that something so hefty was rolled.

Apparently, the bikers wanted a smoke that could hold up during spirited jaunts up and down the coastline, and in true E.P. Carrillo fashion, the tobacco mastermind delivered the goods and then some. And while this sort of super-sized cigar would not be replicated until a few decades later, Carrillo’s role in the creation of the "fat cigar phenomenon" cannot be ignored. 

However, it took quite a bit of convincing for the cigar master blender to believe that these ultra-wide smokes would sell. Even years later, Ernesto was quick to admit that he scrupulously critiqued a competitor’s 60-ring gauge cigar with a discerning eye the first time he encountered it. With his skepticism getting the better of him, Carrillo dismissed the heavyset tobacco product as a passing fad. Surely there was no way that a cigar of this size would ever catch on... 

"I found it perplexing to see the advent of big ring gauge cigars. A cigar with a ring size greater than a 60 seemed to be out of the question for me." —Ernesto Perez-Carrillo

But memories of that limited run of cigars he rolled for the California bike squad back in the ‘70s continued to permeate Carrillo’s mind. And so Ernie decided to do something he never thought possible: He would roll a really big cigar once again.

Serving as a template of sorts, the original biker cigar from all those decades back inspired Ernesto-Perez Carrillo to create what many consider to be his most significant addition to cigar culture, and the most recognizable large ring gauge cigar line of all time: The mighty La Gloria Cubana Serie R. 

Full-bodied in flavor, strength, mouthfeel, and size, the Serie R of today may no longer be under Carrillo’s control, but it retains something else. The title of being the most iconic large ring-gauge cigar of the modern tobacco world. 

Parting Puffs

But it’s not always the cigar itself that is responsible for a particular grade of flavor, aroma, heat, or intensity. How you cut and light a cigar has just as much to do with the subsequent experience as the intensity and frequency of the pulls you make along the way.

However, for many, the thought of smoking something as massive as a 70-ring gauge cigar is borderline laughable. It’s something that you might chief on at a bachelor party or on a cruise, but every day? Not likely.

That said, it does seem like large ring-gauge cigars are here to stay. They will also likely continue to grow in popularity now that they have become widely recognized as a legitimate smoking option, and not a publicity stunt of some sort.

So whether you plan on playing poker with your buddies, are bowling a few frames down at the local alley, or are out fishing, we suggest trying a large ring-gauge version of a familiar cigar for a change. Who knows? You may actually find it to be more enjoyable than those slimmer vitolas you've been adoring all along.