Baccarat

Baccarat is a textbook case: a cigar the connoisseurs look down on and that generations of smokers have loved. Its distinctive feature is the cap, sweetened — a process that applies a mild gum to the cut. Purists see a betrayal in it; retailers know it is often somebody's first cigar.

The blend itself is mild, with a pale wrapper and a very even burn, designed to offend nobody. That is a deliberate construction, not a fault of manufacture: the house has long accepted that it makes a beginner's cigar, in a trade that prefers to address the initiated.

The atlas gains by saying so plainly rather than ignoring it. A good share of the cigar smokers of the American continent started with this one, and that role as a gateway counts, in a history of taste, as much as the prestige blends.

Range Depth

• Baccarat The Game

  Wrapper Connecticut Shade · Strength Light

  The sweetened cap that starts arguments, over a deliberately mild blend and a burn without surprises. The first cigar of a great many smokers — which is no small thing.

  Churchill · Robusto

• Baccarat Maduro

  Wrapper Maduro · Strength Medium

  The same construction under a dark wrapper: more cocoa, the same sweetness at the cap. The next step without leaving familiar ground.

  Rothschild

🥃 Pairings

• Sweet café au lait

  Coffee

  The obvious pairing, and the most honest for a cigar that owns its sweetness.

• Black tea with milk

  Other

  Without alcohol, it holds the sweetened cap without doubling it.