The palate initially gets subtle tastes of earth and hay, followed by citrus and pepper notes with prominent earthy flavours. This cigar, whose burn path and line run steady and straight from beginning to end, is a rare smoke. Montecristo makes their smokes count: the Montecristo Linea 1935 Maltes sports an unusual third band that circles the tip with a copper trim and a fleur-de-lis. Habanos dropped the Romeo from Julieta Romeo Y Julieta to create a new Cuban Revolution in the form of the big, 4.75 inches-long Julieta cigar. Until the beginning of the 21st century, womens cigars were mainly mild cigarillos. In 2010, sensing the shift, Habanos shifted gears to change the impression that Cuban cigars only contain strong tobacco for men. A few decades later, came a herf of eclectic female talent Black, Latino, sexy and gay, such as Whoopi Goldberg, Jodie Foster, Demi Moore, Madonna, Drew Barrymore, Beyonc, the Kardashians, Ciara, Heidi Klum and Jennifer Lopez who smoked blunts as if Viva Cuba Libre was the dotted line in insouciance. Men gasped in cinemas as she appeared smoking a stogie in Touch of Evil.

The German-born Marlene Dietrich was then Hollywoods femme fatale, who shrugged, Im not an actress, Im a personality,the cigar dangling from her famous lips proving the point. In the 1920s, cigar clubs flourished in cosmopolitan, post-War Berlin where the days were intense and the nights were wild. From the first to the final draw, the well-constructed, albeit slightly soft Magnum 54 gives off notes of wood, hay, black pepper and creamy bitterness. The Magnum 54s thickly veined wrapper is less oily than a Vegas cardsharps smile while its cold draw is mild and slightly salty the tastes of cedar and hay are pleasant contrasts. The 46 was theonly Magnum-branded cigars in the Upmann portfolio until the Magnum 50, an Edicin Limitada came along in 2005, to be followed by the Magnum 50 and the Magnum 48. Trendy Indian women smokers are discovering that the complex flavours of a cigar like H Upmann Magnum 46 wrapped in a cocoa-coloured leaf are as versatile as their own personalities: a creamy sugary draw with hints of nuts, toasted tobacco and underlying notes of pine, coffee and leather.

Cigar loving ladies like Sushmita Sen who like to puff on her Cohiba in public dont care for gender apartheid. Then there is the Canadian womens hockey team, which celebrated a gold medal at the 2010 Winter Olympics with cigars and beer. Now, at gatherings of George Sand Society in Santa Monica, women cigar smokers outnumber men three to one. Kipling, Britains first Nobel Laureate in Literature, would have been as flummoxed as a Cuban in a No Smoking lounge to learn that George Sand was no ornamental Belle Epoque maiden, but a celebrated French author who discovered that smoking a cigar can fill the solitary hours with a million gracious images. A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke, was the tobacco trope that defined him as a white male of Britains imperial age where woman, if included was merely as an ornamental appendage and in an inferior role similar to that of the trusted native,as feminist author Julia Bush put it.

By Shanker Gangadhar: Marriage was no match for a good cigar that Rudyard Kipling had ever lit.

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