What’s in Your Diary?

This time of year is one pre-ordained for us to take a close look at how we live our lives.

We’re encouraged to make changes; set new goals; realign our aspirations; take on board new mantras for the coming 12 months and beyond.

Sautter are not a bunch of Resolutionists, on the whole. We prefer to live our lives as best we can at all times rather than rely on a self-help reboot on January 1.

However, as a line in the sand, it does provide a useful moment to pause for thought – and as usual, this also (however loosely) applies to our cigar hobby.

It’s advantageous – and nowhere near as unpleasant as digging around in your psyche probing old psychological wounds – to reassess what you’ve smoked over the past 12 months and why. It’s we we’d also advocate keeping a small cigar diary, no matter how rough and ready, that you can refer to over time.

Despite our best efforts, things slip from our mind. You may vaguely remember that Por Larranaga you smoked and loved during Wimbledon last year, but do you have a mental note of it’s correct name and size, the box date and code of the cigar you smoked, a memory of its wrapper and the core flavours which so inspired you? If you’re anything like most of us – the answer is no.

By keeping, and referring back to, notes such as these, you’ll be able to flick through the pages and have an instant re-run of your cigar year. It will, of course, also give you a blow by blow episodic account of other activities in your life, for our cigars and our work and play are intrinsically entwined. Certain places and people will spark certain memories of the cigar you enjoyed at the time. And certain cigars will instantly take you back to a certain time and place.

Your cigar diary will also make you aware of trends you probably hadn’t noticed. I bet you hadn’t realised before that during the Winter months your proclivity for smaller smokes had more than doubled. Your consumption of H Upmann Half Corona may have gone through the roof for good reason; it’s colder outside where you normally smoke; you have less time to enjoy a cigar at this time of year; maybe your palate craves a short, sharp, espresso-style wake up of a cigar rather than a longer bout of cigar grappling.

You will also almost certainly remind yourself of cigars that you’ve forgotten you like. Over time, some things get pushed out of mind. So, refresh yours and work up your Cigar Diary over the next 12 months. You can be as fancy or as slapdash as you like. Stick in bands; add columns for tasting notes; draw pictures of stick men in clouds of smoke. Whatever takes your fancy. If a monosyllabic ‘Nice cigar. Claro wrapper. Chocolate and coffee.’ Is as much as you want to write, so be it.

Whatever sort of cigar diary you keep and however you choose to do so, please accept the felicitations of the New Year from all at Sautter. We’re here, waiting patiently, to guide you through another 12 months of sensational seasonal cigar success.