WHAT SIZE CIGAR ARE YOU?

"I always say the cigar looks like the people who are smoking it. It’s difficult to see a small person smoking a Churchill. You can see it, but it is difficult."

That's La Aurora chief Guillermo Leon, noting the relationship between the size of smokers and the size of their cigars. Of shorter folks, he said "They like to smoke a short cigar; I don’t know why but they do."

This is not a new idea. In fact, the first mention we found of specific sizes of people and specific sizes of cigars comes from Paul Garmirian in his landmark work, The Gourmet Guide to Cigars, first published in 1990:

Although selecting the right shape of the cigar is a measure of personal choice, there are some aesthetic guidelines which can be followed. The cigar ought to blend harmoniously with your size and frame. The following is a list to match men with their cigars. Although this has not been done before by any author on cigars, it is only suggested as a rule of thumb.

 Height: 6'00" - Weight: 175 lbs. - Long Panatela

·  Height: 5'10" - Weight: 160 lbs. - Lonsdale

·  Height: 5'07" - Weight: 170 lbs. - Corona Grande

·  Height: 5'07" to 5'09" - Weight: 150 lbs. - Corona

·  Height: 5'05" to 6'00" - Weight: 170 lbs. - Rothchild/Corona Extra

·  Height: 5'05" to 6'00" - Weight: 180 lbs. - Belicoso/Torpedo

·  Height: 5'07" to 6'00" - Weight: 190 lbs. - Churchill

The suggested cigars may be a little outdated, given today's penchant for thicker ring gauges, but the larger the man in Garmirian's list, the longer the cigar. Perhaps the suggestions for 42-ring Coronas and Lonsdales would be, today, Robustos and Toros?

But while Leon agrees with the concept, he also cautions that today's trends toward shorter cigars are dictated in part by the anti-tobacco environment: "Mainly the time to smoke, and maybe because it’s a trend," he observed. "If it’s a trend, everybody will do it."

What do you think? What size fits you?