Becoming a master cigar sommelier

On the growing list of interesting activities and hobbies to pursue, studying towards becoming a master cigar sommelier through the International Association of Cigar Sommeliers (IACS) is high up.

It is one of those “just because” activities. It will possibly make these words that I write about cigars a bit more interesting.

I am not, however, looking to get a job as a cigar sommelier, though it wouldn’t be a bad way of spending my working hours. I try to keep the words of American voice actor Jeff Bennett in mind when thinking about hobbies: “Sometimes when you turn a hobby into a job, it becomes work.”

In this “monetise everything” world, I advocate for returning to doing things for leisure and pleasure.

Anyway, for a long time, the IACS was the only place that one could get certified as a cigar sommelier, until the recent launch of the Cigar Academy, headquartered in Miami in the US.

The IACS offers two courses: a Cigar Sommelier certificate and Master Cigar Sommelier diploma, initially designed for hospitality professionals but open to others.

The Cigar Academy has launched with the Level One Award course, which is an introductory course that covers elements such as cigar history, cigar anatomy, tobacco regions, cultivation, curing and ageing, and so on.

I signed up for this and have three months to complete and write the final 90-minute exam. I am hoping that by the time I get there, Level 2 Specialist and Level 3 Sommelier courses will be up and running. It is purely online, whereas the IACS courses have a classroom, face-to-face component.

The Cigar Academy has the endorsement of a number of cigar manufacturers, including Arturo Fuente, AJ Fernandez, Oliva, Quesada Cigars and La Flor Dominicana, among others. And they have partnered with Boveda and Les Fines Lames.

I am still early in the course, having just completed the brief history of cigars module. It is interesting to see how different people package a history that goes back centuries with an element of measured speculation.

The words of a US historian Henry Glassie came to mind while I was going through this module: “History is not the past but a map of the past, drawn from a particular point of view, to be useful to the modern traveller.”

In the course, some attention is given to the use of tobacco for religious, social and medicinal purposes by the indigenous people — the Mayan, Aztecs and Inca — of the Americas, starting in what is now Peru, for “at least 3,000 to 5,000 years”.

I have been simultaneously reading the fourth edition of Richard Carleton Hacker’s book, The Ultimate Cigar Book, and, for Hacker, the beginning is October 1492 when the conquistadors, led by Christopher Columbus, “discovered” the Americas, landing on Cuba’s shores. When they went ashore, they “discovered” the people native to those lands smoking tobacco and, eventually, took that back to Europe.

An interesting fact is that since then, human beings have had such a conflicted relationship with tobacco. As tobacco began to take various forms, there were those, like Catherine de Medici, of the Florentine de Medici family and subsequently Queen of France, who used it on recommendation of her physician, and supported its spread.

And then there were those who were vehemently opposed to it, like England’s King James I, the Catholic Church and Turkey’s Sultan Murad, going as far as executing those who used it publicly.

But, subjective history notwithstanding, there is something to be said for exploring, in essence, a curated version of the journey of cigars from the seed to the shelves.

To date, I have spent many hours trawling the internet and reading books to get an understanding of the different elements of cigar making.

If you are also interested, I would definitely recommend both courses and The Ultimate Cigar Book.