Guide · Choose
Cigar sizes and shapes
What vitola, length, and ring gauge mean, with the published dimensions of the common sizes and the few smoking times anyone actually publishes.
Checked
In review — a cigar smoker has not checked this page yet.
A cigar's size is written as two numbers: length in inches × ring gauge. Ring gauge is the diameter in 64ths of an inch, so a ring gauge of 50 is 50/64 of an inch across, which is just under 20 mm. A 38 is about 15 mm, and a 60 is about 24 mm.
The name attached to those numbers — robusto, corona, toro — is the vitola. Vitola names are traditional rather than standardised. Cigar Aficionado publishes most of them as ranges, not fixed sizes, and warns that one company's corona tastes nothing like another's. The numbers are the reliable part; the name is a shorthand.
What each number changes
- Ring gauge changes how much wrapper you taste. A cigar is rolled from filler leaves inside a binder and then a wrapper. The wrapper leaf is the same thickness whatever the size, so a thin cigar carries proportionally more of it: Cigar Dojo worked the surface-area maths and got a wrapper-to-filler ratio three times higher on a panetela than on a gordo grande. Not everyone accepts that this changes the taste, but the geometry is not in doubt.
- Ring gauge changes the heat. Thin cigars tend to burn hotter than fat ones.
- Length changes the time. A longer cigar takes longer. That is all it reliably tells you.
- Neither one is strength. Cigar Aficionado is blunt about it: there is no correlation between the size of a cigar and its strength. An eight-inch cigar of mild tobacco is mild.
The common sizes
These are Cigar Aficionado's published dimensions. Where it gives a range, the range is printed, because that is what the trade actually does.
| Vitola | Published dimensions |
|---|---|
| Petit corona | about 4½ × 40–42 |
| Corona | 5½–6 × 42–44 |
| Robusto | 4¾–5½ × 48–52 |
| Corona gorda / toro | 5⅝ × 46, or 6 × 50 |
| Lonsdale | 6½ × 42 |
| Churchill | 7 × 47 |
| Double corona | 7½–8½ × 49–52 |
| Panetela | 5–7½ × 34–38 |
| Grande / gordo | ring 60+, 4¾ and longer |
Two things that table hides. The corona is the benchmark every other size is described against, which is why its range is the one worth memorising. And a lancero is a panetela at 7½ × 38 — the Cuban Laguito No. 1 size, per halfwheel — not a separate family.
How long each one takes
No authority publishes a smoking time for every vitola. Cigar Aficionado does not. Charts that give eleven tight ranges are guessing, and we are not going to add another one.
The figures below are Northwoods Humidors', published as a table, and they cover six sizes:
| Vitola | Size | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Corona | 5.5 × 42 | 30–45 min |
| Robusto | 5 × 50 | 45–60 min |
| Panetela | 7 × 38 | 45–60 min |
| Toro | 6 × 50 | 60–90 min |
| Lonsdale | 6.5 × 42 | 60–75 min |
| Churchill | 7 × 47 | 90–120 min |
We print no time for a petit corona, a corona gorda, a double corona or a 60-ring gordo, because we could not find one published.
Times like these assume an unhurried pace: sources put a normal rhythm at one to two draws a minute. Smoking faster does not just finish sooner, it makes the smoke hot and bitter. See how to smoke a cigar.
Shapes
Every cigar falls into one of two families.
Parejo — a straight-sided cigar. Most have an open foot for lighting and need cutting before you smoke. Everything in the chart above is a parejo, and it is the great majority of what is made.
Figurado — anything that is not a straight-sided cylinder. The common ones, as Cigar Aficionado classes them:
- Pyramid — a cut foot like a parejo, with the head tapered to a point. Usually 6 to 7 inches, around ring 40 at the head widening to 52–54 at the foot.
- Torpedo and belicoso — both sit inside the pyramid category and the words are used loosely. Cigar Aficionado calls a torpedo a pyramid with a sharper point, and a traditional belicoso a short pyramid with a rounder head — while noting that today's belicosos are often just coronas with a taper added. Do not expect two brands to mean the same thing. Cut across the taper; the further down you cut, the wider the opening.
- Perfecto — tapered at both ends, usually with a bulge in the middle. Shapes vary enormously inside this one name.
- Culebra — three panetelas braided together and tied with string, sold as one cigar and unbraided to smoke separately.
- Diadema — a very large figurado, tapered at head and foot, sometimes eight inches or more.
Cutting each of these: how to cut a cigar.
Which size to start with
A robusto is the usual answer, and Cigar Aficionado calls it the most popular size in America. It runs 45 to 60 minutes, so you can finish one in a sitting; it is thick enough not to burn hot; and almost every brand makes one, which makes it the size where you can compare two blends against each other rather than two shapes.