One thing I have always wondered.......

[lampshade]

Originally Posted by bobarian

Please cite your source for the information on tobacco. I had not heard this before. I had heard that Cohiba is rolled using a leaf that is generally aged for a longer period and that the pricing on all cigars is based upon weight(length and RG).

Not doubting you but would like to know your source.

No problem. It's just like being back in grad school! I was going from memory, for the most part, but I remembered hearing something about it most recently on an episode of Smoke on Wealth TV (I've only seen thios network on Fios).

As luck would have it, my DVR has recently caught a copy of the show. It is titled "A Celebration of the Cigar, Part 1," and has an interview with a guy named Ely Sbrozzi, manager of La Casa del Habanos (a shop in Toronto, I believe). Here's a transcript of the relevant portion (about 20 minutes in):

You know, price is funny when we discuss Cuban cigars, because the Cuban is priced according to the box weight: how much tobacco went into, you know, a particular box and a particular style. So for the most part, if you look at a box of petite corona – whether they be from Montecristo, Romeo and Juliet, Bolivar, whatever they may be – petite coronas are pretty much a standard price. The only exception to this is Cohiba, which is considered the finest of the Cuban cigars. It’s priced nearly double that of anything else. But, I mean, there’s a whole host of reasons why that is. It’s triple fermented, where every other Cuban cigar is only double fermented. It has the best choice of the leaves, after every harvest. More importantly, I think, than anything else, it was Fidel’s cigar. It was the first cigar made after the revolution, and it was really made to epitomize Cuban cigar rolling. But in general, the price of a Cuban cigar is not because of the flavor, or necessarily, the quality. It has to do with the size, and the fact that there is a standardized price.

As other have already stated, there appear to me some lines of Cohiba that are not triple fermented. Not having any way to verify statements myself, I chalk up that inaccuracy to generalization. Obviously, television is not the best place to get reliable information, though I consider it to be on par with most sources available on the Internet.