Hate to say, but a lot of their propaganda is pure baloney. According to that site, Cuban Tobacco is not fermented at all. Strange that Cohiba is famous for it's third fermentation process then...
*cough* It seems they went all out to convince us how much better their product is than 'Harsh' and 'Acidic' Cuban Cigars.
Bah.
From
http://www.lacasadelhabano.cu/site/content...4/lang,english/ (Page 4 of the link, bold mine):
Uniquely amongst Habanos, two of Cohiba's filler leaves, the seco and the ligero, undergo a third fermentation in barrels, which adds smoothness to the blend
According to everything I've read, Cuban shade-grown wrapper only gets the first (full leaf) fermentation, plus whatever "special treatment" is done at each factory. IIRC, that author was referring to the lack of a second fermentation (after aging the leaves and stripping the stem) for wrapper.
As for acidity, how can one not notice that, before aging, CC's are, on average, more acidic than similar NC's?. As an aside, Canada Customs developed a (unfortunately destructive) methodology for determining Cuban vs. non-Cuban cigars (new production, not aged stuff). IIRC, US Customs uses the same methodology. The method isn't perfect - Bering being an infamous example - but acidity was one of the discriminants, IIRC.
Agreed that there is a lot of propaganda on the link - the same is true of any company literature. However, some of the originally-published-elsewhere articles aren't anywhere else on the web AFAIK, e.g., the CigarOasis company's research into how humidity enters and leaves a cigar. The company bought the rights to publish these articles from the copyright holders so we can read them for free; there are going to be ads :whistling: .
