I just leave mine the way God made'm.
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I just leave mine the way God made'm.
cello on here
Cellophane will not prevent "marrying" of flavors. Real cello is made of plant emulsion and is therefore quite porous. It allows for air exchange and mostly adds a layer of protection against damage during rigorous storage. It does however slow the process markedly, since flavor exchange occurs mostly in the form of oils passing from cigar to cigar. As air is exchanged by moist gasses escaping from the cigar, since there's not direct contact leaf-to-leaf, it's slowed. There is alway a little bit of oil attached to the gas exchange, so it does happen; just to a far lesser extent.
Naked cigars laying next to/on top of one another is the primary way flavors become exchanged. Over the years, there's been some debate on how extensive this process is. On the extreme end of the debate is Carlito Fuente, who holds that laying cigars of different types together will result in rapid and negative marrying. I've read where others have said that it's negligible. Personally I've never really worried about it much and have yet to experience any real effect. As my cigars grow older and older, I expect I will eventually begin to.
I don't think there's any way to do away with it completely. Even in a well ventilated walk-in, you'll still get some oils flying around in the air. The best we can do is minimize it to the greatest extent by segregating wrapper styles. Maduro with maduro, natural with natural, strong with strong and so on. Leaving the cello on will also help, but not much. Keeping them in original boxes works even better.
Great advice either cello on or off. Early on in my cigar smoking I just kept everything out of box in 1 humi on shelves. Do to the amount of cigars I quickly acquired that initial stock lasted several years. The natural's basically lost all their flavor and end up tasting just like maduros they sat next too. Now what I do is box all cigars by type and size. This works well if you have a large cooler. I found I prefer removing the cello now only because after say 7-8 years most the cello turn dark yellow and start to fall apart around the cigar and ends up just making a mess in the box anyway.
Cello turns yellow over time in a humidor because the gas/air exchanged from the cigar to the humidor contains little droplets of oil from the cigar. In that respect, cigars are swapping bits of themselves in your humidor.
I haven't noticed any kind of "generalizing" of flavors of my sticks, they all remain unique in their own respect. However, the oldest I have are around - 4 years old or so.
The only way to really tell would be to keep a control humidor and then put sticks in another, mixed with others. Then after a set time, see how they compare. That would be kind of a fun experiment actually :)