Championship Cigars: What to Give a Title Winner, and What to Light When You Win

Championship cigars get bought by two kinds of people: the ones who just won something, and the ones who love them. Either way, the place to start is our El Septimo limited editions, the shelf we go to ourselves when the moment is bigger than an ordinary evening. If the title is yours, you want a cigar that is large, slow and worth the photograph. If it belongs to someone else, you want a gift that outlasts the night.

Not sure what the winner smokes? The Cigar Finder narrows it down in four questions. Otherwise, read on. We will name the cigar, the box and the price.

What makes championship cigars different

Three things, and none of them is the band.

Size. A celebration runs long, and the cigar should too. A thick Gordo or a nine inch Salomon burns slowly enough to last through the speeches, the photographs and the second round. If you are planning around a schedule, our guide to how long a cigar lasts by size has the detail.

Presentation. This is a cigar that gets opened in front of people. A lacquered box, a gold band or an individual tube is part of the moment, the same way the trophy is.

Enough of them. Nobody celebrates alone. One showpiece for the winner is a fine start, but the night is better with a box on the table.

The habit has a real origin. Red Auerbach, who coached the Boston Celtics, used to light a cigar on the bench once he decided a game was won, and the victory cigar has belonged to American sport ever since. You do not need a banner in the rafters to borrow it. A club championship, a league title, a closed deal, or a fantasy league that finally went your way all count.

The one you light yourself

If it were our win, it would be the El Septimo Vartan The Dragon. It is a Gordo from the limited edition shelf, 6 3/4 inches by 58 ring, rolled in Costa Rica, medium to full in body. It opens on cedar and earth, moves into pepper and warm spice, and picks up a little sweetness and a roasted note as it goes. It comes in a box of eight, which is about right for a captain's table. At $93.00 a stick it is the most expensive cigar in this guide, and it should be. This is the one you keep, not the one you hand out.

For the photograph, nothing beats a Salomon. The Van Gogh Royal Salomon is nine inches long and shaped by hand, and held next to a trophy it looks exactly like the occasion. Dark cocoa, leather and aromatic spice, medium to full. Its shorter sibling, the Botticelli Salomon at 7 1/2 by 58, leans toward espresso, earth and dark wood. Of all the Salomons we stock, these two are the ones our customers order most. Both belong to the Sacred Arts collection, and both come in a box of 20.

Light it with something that matches. El Septimo makes a triple torch lighter and a limited edition guillotine cutter that carry the Vartan artwork on a gold finish. A torch matters more than usual here, because celebrations have a way of moving outside.

What a winner lights, and what it gets lit with. Prices and stock are live.

How many to buy for a team

Count the adults who will actually light one, then add a few. There is always a late arrival: a coach, a father, a friend who drove three hours. Everyone who takes one should be 21 or older.

Then match the box to the number. Our big formats come in boxes of 8, 20 and 25, and we keep the Vartan in bundles of 10, 20 and 50 as well, for larger rosters. It is the same arithmetic we worked through for a wedding party in our groomsmen guide: buy by the box, not by the stick, and nobody gets left out.

The harder question is strength. A team is a mixed room. Some of them smoke every week, and some have not held a cigar since the last title. For that room we would choose the Alfonso Extra Añejo No. 4 Toro Grande: 6 3/4 by 56, aged five years on cedar and French oak, mild to medium, all cedar, cream, vanilla and toasted nut. It is a generous cigar that does not punish anyone. If the room is full of regular smokers, the Botticelli box is the better call. And for the long night after, when it is down to the few who stayed, the Atabey Dioses is an eight inch Double Corona, medium in body, with sweet cedar, dark fruit and caramel, and it takes its time.

Pick by the kind of win

The moment	What we would choose	Size	Body	Single	Box or set
You won it yourself	El Septimo Vartan The Dragon Gordo	6 3/4 x 58	Medium to full	$93.00	Box of 8, $705.50
The photograph with the trophy	El Septimo Van Gogh Royal Salomon	9 x 55	Medium to full	$38.00	Box of 20, $680.00
A team of regular smokers	El Septimo Botticelli Salomon	7 1/2 x 58	Medium to full	$28.50	Box of 20, $510.00
A mixed room: team, staff, family	Alfonso Extra Añejo No. 4 Toro Grande	6 3/4 x 56	Mild to medium	$52.50	Box of 25, $1,306.50
The long night after	Atabey Dioses Double Corona	8 x 50	Medium	$44.00	Box of 25, $1,104.50
A gift for a winner who collects	Byron 175 Tribute Set	Four sizes, 52 to 56 ring	Builds through the set	Sold as a set	Set of 4 in tubes, $300.00
The gift for a whole season	El Septimo Mi Familia Limited Edition	Five sizes, 40 to 56 ring	Creamy Connecticut to richer Maduro	Sold as a box	20 cigars, $1,900.00

Every price in that table is the live price on our site today. If you want to see the rest of the house before you decide, the full El Septimo collection runs to more than 150 listings, cigars and accessories alike.

What to give a title winner

The cigars are gone by midnight. The gift should not be. When you are buying for the champion rather than for the party, buy the thing that stays on the desk.

A lighter is the classic. The El Septimo x S.T. Dupont Alexander Ping is solid brass with a palladium finish and two soft flames, and it makes the sound Dupont is known for when it opens. It is a lighter for the study, not the parking lot. For the clubhouse, the office or the bar at home, the Brizard Gatsby table lighter in black leather stands four inches tall, fires three torch flames from a chrome lever and has a punch cutter built in, so one object on the table does both jobs.

If the winner's taste runs another way, there is more to choose from in our lighters and our cutters, and we compared the best of them side by side in our luxury cutter and lighter guide.

For a collector, give cigars that cannot simply be reordered. The Byron 175 Tribute Set is four cigars, each sealed in its own aluminum tube, made to mark 175 years of the Byron name. We smoke them in order, smallest ring to largest, across one long evening: dry cedar first, then a dark sweetness closer to cherry and dried fig than to sugar. It is a rare set, and we cannot promise another once ours are gone. One level up, the El Septimo Mi Familia Limited Edition holds twenty cigars in five sizes, each in a Connecticut and a Maduro version, from a release of 1,000 boxes.

And if the win deserves furniture, the Maccarrone Supersport 40 is a desktop humidor built by hand in Tuscany, with inlaid wood, a high-gloss finish, a cedar lining and room for about forty cigars. It is where the rest of the box lives after the party.

We can engrave initials or a logo, and we put together custom gift boxes for occasions like this one. The options are on our customization page, and a quick call settles the rest.

For the whole team, and for the shelf afterward.

Three more winners, already covered

For the club champion at the golf course, you want a cigar that lasts the back nine and a case that survives the bag. Both are in our golf and poker night guide. For the colleague who closed the biggest deal of the year, start with the closing gift guide. And for the coach or captain stepping away after the title, our retirement gift guide matches aged cigars to the years.

The short version

Light something large and slow. Buy it by the box so the whole team is covered. Give the winner something that lasts longer than the smoke. If the title is yours, start with Vartan The Dragon. If it is someone else's, start with a lighter or the Byron set, and let the celebration cigars take care of the rest.