Why do some cellos turn brown?

[T.G]

Originally Posted by bobarian

I really hope you didn't mean to call fraud and deception "am interesting idea"

Much like plume or bloom, there really is no evidence that brown cello imparts any additional flavor to a cigar. But is a nice curiosity and always good for conversation.

Originally Posted by AdamJoshua

The brown cello thing is great but from what I have seen means very little other than to hold it up and have people say "wow", smoked a '94 Upmann machine made the other night, en cello, the cello was barely discolored at all, yet the cigar was and you can quote me on this, freaking out of this world.

Originally Posted by badbriar

Would have said age and chemistry over time, but Adam blew that right out of the water!
At any rate, at one of my favorite local B&M's, people have been known to dig for those 'toned' wrapper sticks!
RR

Bob, the other Adam and Rob, you've kind of hit on why I did what I did with a bunch of empty cello wrappers; to show that brown cello can mean nothing. Sure, it can mean old, but my point in that experiment was to disprove the commonly held incorrect belief that "yellow cello =(absolute)= aged cigar" and show that the creation of darker cello can be accelerated.

Originally Posted by The Poet

Re this, and on topic, what about those faux brown cellos resulting from fake oscuros whose wrappers have been dyed a dark brown or even near-black by something?

It isn't a common practice, but it happens.

Meh. Most of the dyed nc cigars today (last 10 or so years) are are colored with a dye derived from crushed and boiled tobacco plant stalks or just simply boiled capa leaves. Cello isn't the same as your fingers or lips, it's unlikely it will absorb these compounds any faster than they would for a cigar sporting a naturally fermented capa of the same shade. In fact, boiled capa leaf might actually have a slower rate of yellowing as the oils and other compounds that might cause a cello to turn yellow all leeched out in the boil process.