plume the magic crystal? - puff the magic moon?

After a long and difficult drought in Lindenau, with the loss of so many hack-berry trees and even one pecan tree, the rains have come. The smell of the barnyard has once again filled the air. Its hard to miss, except on the windiest days. The fallen trees have succumbed to the molds and the insects and have begun to rot. The demise of life still seems to remind us of Adam's curse, with it's decay and thorns. Cigars need humidity to avoid drying out and losing the oily sweetness that the finest purvey. In the humidity is the risk of mold and decay - as opposed to fermentation and the aging and melding of flavor. Spanish ceder helps to preserve and prevent the molds from taking over in the humid environment. Spanish cedar is aromatic like American cedar, but it is not actually related in type. Aging is accelerated by the heat and slowed by cooler environs. One can age a fine cigar in cellophane (which tends to yellow like ivory) or out of cellophane. There is some disagreement on this issue. Aging can occur in either and there is more blending of cigars if the cellophane is removed. With aging comes the plume or crystalline tobacco oils on the surface of the cigar wrapper. They are pleasantly tasty, but often I have wiped them off a bit to verify that the matter was plume and not mold.

One of the questions one must consider in aging cigars is "What can be done to accelerate aging without the consequential rise of tobacco beetles and mold?" - and "How long will it take?" There is some aging that has taken place even before the box arrives to ones humidor. It is a very pleasant thing to open a box of cigars and see plume covered stogies. NASA also seems to appreciate the impact of seeing plume. I wonder how many stogies they had to smoke and for how long they had to age them? I wonder how many people they had to moon before they saw the impact?

NASA finally sees plume from moon impact
LCROSS camera captures image of ‘faint’ plume with debris, vapor
via MSNBC.com

Looking for a cigar I found an old batch of cigars still in yellowed cellophane. The cigars were the small 4x48 Astral (i.e. the moon) Perfecto (rocketship) no.1 maduro's. Even in the cello, they had abundant plume. They are Honduran made with and oily Connecticut Broadleaf maduro wrapper. They were small and plume covered, like they had just hit a large mud puddle on the moon. The wrapper was classic CBLM and was thick and veiny. The taste was creamy, woody, and sweet with abundant billowing smoke - for such a small vitola. The burn was good, although it was a short smoke, with a short finish.