Two Cigars… at the Same Time

I’d heard it was possible, maybe even enjoyable, but I’d never seen it done. I even read somewhere the Samuel L. Jackson swears by it, though I can’t remember for the life of me where I read that. I’m talking, of course, about smoking two cigars at once.

I was curious about this practice, maybe even a little wary of it, especially after reading that even Mark Twain, who is known for being one of the biggest cigar hounds in history, didn’t do it (“I smoke in moderation. Only one cigar at a time.”). After doing a little reading on Puff.com and finding out that this is a legitimate practice, albeit not a very widespread one, I decided to grab two of our exclusives, and two very different ones at that; the Kensington Connecticut Reserve Duke by Alec Bradley and the Bella Torres Nicaraguan Selection Torpedo by Habana Cuba; and smoked them together.

When I say this, I don’t mean that I literally puffed on both cigars simultaneously, as pictured. I mean that I took alternating puffs of the cigars, mixing up a bit as I went along—puffing one first, then the other, then switching up the order. Surprisingly, I got a few flavors that I’ve never gotten from either cigar individually.

The Kensington Connecticut Reserve, as you may know, is a very creamy, toasty, mellow smoke; the Bella Torres Nicaraguan Selection has a bit more chocolate and pepper, and is a bit stronger overall. I thought the stronger of the two would overpower the mellower, but this didn’t happen as dramatically as I expected it to. The creamy sweetness of the Kensington actually combined really nicely with the dark cocoa flavor of the Bella Torres Nicaraguan to form a recognizable milk chocolate note, a note that I haven’t gotten from many other sticks.

But this wasn’t the strangest hybrid flavor I got—not by a long shot. That milk chocolate lingered long enough to combine with the toasty, creamy, graham cracker base of the Kensington, and somehow this combined perfectly with the dark, malty sweetness of the Bella Torres Nicaraguan Selection to form a flavor I’ve never gotten from any other cigar: toasted marshmallow. It might sound far-fetched, but the combination of the toasted marshmallow, graham cracker, and milk chocolate flavors tasted like, you guessed it, s’mores.

Aside from the above flavor combinations, smoking two cigars also gave me an opportunity to compare the construction of each stick. The Kensington had a bit of a firm draw and burned fairly quickly; on the other hand, the Bella Torres Nicaraguan had a very easy draw and burned incredibly slowly, actually at about half the rate of the Kensington. This was actually kind of nice, though, because it left me with another couple inches of cigar to smoke after the Kensington burnt down all the way.

Anyway, needless to say, do not attempt this unless you smoke fairly often and have a decent tolerance to nicotine. I smoke almost every day and I was still pretty lightheaded afterwards, so to the novice smoker, this might prove to be a bit too much. Also, not every combination is going to taste like s’mores and milk chocolate. Some might combine horribly, and aside from trying them, there’s really no way to tell if two cigars will clash or cancel each other out. I’d give you an example, but this is the only two-cigar combo I’ve tried.

But that said, if you’ve got a few extra sticks of two different cigars, try smoking them together—if they work together half as well as the Kensington Connecticut Reserve and the Bella Torres Nicaraguan Selection, it’ll be worth it.