How to Roll a Cigar – Wrapper Only

If you don’t think much about hand rolled cigars then watch this video. You will appreciate one much more. It takes a lot of steps to hand roll a cigar and some skills. It’s not an easy task. And this is only the cigar wrapper.

Hand rolling a cigar sounds relatively easy. I mean how difficult is it to bunch some tobacco leaves together and then roll a leaf around them?

Well….it’s a little more complicated then that and this is why it takes years for a person to become a good cigar roller.

First you start with some filler which is torn to the right size and bunched together. You have to know the right amount of filler and know how tight to bunch it together. Then a Binder is used to hold the filler together and shape the cigar. You roll the cigar on a board to tighten the binder and shape the cigar. Now you select a wrapper and cut it to size and then wrap the binder. It takes a lot of practice to get it right.

Take note of how much time it takes to make one cigar.

Watch this video of a professional cigar roller.

Which cigars are handmade?

That’s a really tough question. Usually the premium or better quality cigars are handmade or hand rolled but not always. You have to do a little research and read the description of a particular cigar you are interested in. Cigars in the $20+ range are most likely handmade.

Cuban cigars are all hand rolled. Many cigars from Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Honduras are hand rolled. Mexico has some machine rolled cigars so do your research on these.

The cheap cigars in most convenience stores are machine made like White Owl, Phillies and Dutch Masters.

Machine rolled does not necessarily mean they are not good. Just because a cigar is hand rolled does not make it great. It’s the tobacco that makes a cigar great.