Luxury Gifts for Cigar Lovers: A Buying Guide by Budget

The best luxury gifts for cigar lovers are almost never cigars. Cigars are a matter of personal taste, and taste is the one thing a gift buyer usually cannot guess. Accessories are different. A cutter, a lighter, a case, an ashtray or a humidor works regardless of whether he smokes Connecticut or maduro, and it stays in use for years. That is why this guide is built around objects first, and why every pick below is something we keep in stock and can ship or hand over in Woodland Hills. If you would rather start with the cigar itself, our cigar samplers solve the taste problem in a different way, and we cover them further down.

Everything here is priced live from our own catalog, so what you see is what it costs today. Prices move, stock moves, and a guide that quotes numbers from six months ago is worse than no guide at all.

Start with how he smokes, not what he smokes

Ask one question before you buy anything: where does he actually smoke? The answer decides the category, and the category matters far more than the brand.

He smokes at home, in the same chair

Buy for the table. An ashtray, a table lighter or a desktop humidor gets used every single time and sits in view between sessions. Browse cigar ashtrays and desktop humidors first.

He smokes on the move, at the course or on the road

Buy for the pocket. A three cigar leather case protects the wrapper, and a pocket torch that works outdoors matters more than one that looks good indoors. Our guide to choosing a cigar travel case walks through capacity and ring gauge, which is the detail most buyers get wrong.

He is new to it

Buy a cutter and a lighter he will not outgrow, then let him choose the cigars. A good cigar cutter lasts decades. A cigar lasts an hour.

Under $100: the gift that gets used every week

This is the most reliable band in the whole guide, and the one most people skip because it feels too easy. A well made cutter or a proper ashtray at this price will outlast almost anything else in the room.

The four below are what we hand people who ask for something under $100 that will not disappoint. Two are accessories he will keep. Two are curated multi packs, which let him taste several blends from one maker rather than committing to a box.

The Brizard Double Guillotine II is the one we reach for most often as a gift. It is a double blade guillotine with a leather body, and it handles a large ring gauge without crushing the cap, which is where cheaper cutters fail. If you want a matching lighter in the same band, the cigar lighters collection starts well below the pieces shown further down this page.

$100 to $300: the considered gift

This is where a gift starts to feel deliberate rather than dutiful. It is also the band where leather, plating and finish stop being cosmetic and start affecting how long the object survives.

A three cigar case is the single most useful thing in this range. It is the piece a smoker never buys for himself and uses constantly once he has one. A cylindrical desk humidor is the second, because it holds a working week of cigars without the commitment of a full cabinet.

One practical note on cases. Measure before you buy. A standard three cigar case fits a robusto or a toro comfortably, but a 60 ring gauge cigar needs a gordo sized case, and the difference is not obvious from a photo. The full range sits in cigar travel cases and tubes, and we are happy to check a specific cigar against a specific case by phone.

$300 to $1,000: the milestone gift

Buy in this band for a birthday with a zero in it, a retirement, a wedding or a closing. These are objects with a name on them, and they get remembered as much for the occasion as for the thing itself.

Two directions work here. A table lighter or a sculptural ashtray becomes the centerpiece of wherever he smokes. A leather travel humidor or a compact 30 to 40 count humidor solves storage properly, which is the problem most enthusiasts live with unresolved for years. If storage is the gap, our guide to keeping cigars fresh explains what a humidor is actually doing.

The Havana Traveler is worth understanding before you choose it. It is a leather travel humidor that carries cigars, a cutter and a lighter together, and several versions add a flask or a valuables pouch. It is the piece our travelling customers replace last. The full run of them, in leather, ostrich and exotic patterns, sits in our Havana Traveler sets.

Over $1,000: the showpiece

At this level you are buying a piece of furniture or a piece of craft, and the cigars are almost beside the point. Expect hand inlaid marquetry, genuine ostrich, exotic hardwoods and plated brass, and expect the object to be finished by hand over weeks rather than assembled in an afternoon.

We are the official United States distributor of Maccarrone, jointly with Brizard and Co, which is why our range at this price is deeper than most of the category. The Dolcevita Double below is a mahogany veneer body with hand inlaid maple marquetry and palladium plated solid brass rests. It is a working ashtray that happens to look like an object in a case.

If a cabinet is the goal rather than a chest, the larger climate controlled units live in our full humidor range. Those are a different kind of purchase, and we would rather talk one through with you than have you guess at capacity.

What to buy when you know nothing about his taste

This is the most common situation we deal with when people come to us for gifts for cigar smokers, and there are three honest answers.

Buy a sampler. A curated multi pack from one maker lets him taste four or five blends without committing to a box. Start in cigar samplers.

Buy mild to medium if you must guess. A full bodied cigar given to someone who prefers mild is unsmokable, while a mild cigar given to a full bodied smoker is merely a quiet afternoon. The risk is asymmetric, so guess low. Our mild cigars collection is the safe end, and our guide to mild, medium and full strength explains the difference in a page.

Buy the accessory instead. Everything in the four tiers above works without knowing a single thing about his palate. If you want to narrow it in four questions, our Cigar Finder was built for exactly this.

Quick comparison by budget

Four gifts we quietly talk people out of

We would rather lose a sale than have a gift sit in a drawer. These four come up constantly.

A single very expensive cigar

One cigar is one hour. The same money in a cutter or a case gives him ten years. If you want the cigar to be the gift, make it a box or a multi pack.

A cheap starter humidor

An inexpensive humidor that does not hold humidity is worse than no humidor, because it dries cigars slowly while looking like it is working. Either buy a properly built one or buy the cigars and let him store them elsewhere.

A flavored or infused cigar for a premium smoker

Tastes vary and there is nothing wrong with an infused cigar, but a smoker who has settled into premium blends is unlikely to want one, and it is the gift most often left unsmoked.

A cutter with a single dull blade

The cut is the first thing that can ruin a cigar. A double blade guillotine or a good V cutter costs a little more and removes the problem permanently. We break the whole kit down in our cutter, lighter and case guide.

Presentation, engraving and gift boxes

Presentation is doing more work than people expect, particularly for a corporate or milestone gift. Two options are worth knowing about.

Engraving and personalization. We offer engraving and custom cigar gift boxes for weddings, anniversaries and corporate events. Details and the engraving add on are on our customizations page.

Presentation boxes. A luxury cigar gift set does not have to come pre assembled. Our El Septimo gift boxes are presentation cases you fill yourself, which lets you pair a small number of cigars from our El Septimo range with a case that looks like the occasion it is for. We carry one of the deepest El Septimo selections in the country, so the pairing options here are unusually wide.

The bottom line

If you take one thing from this guide, take this: buy the object, not the cigar. Luxury gifts for cigar lovers succeed when they survive the occasion, and an accessory does that in a way a single smoke cannot. Set your budget, pick the category that matches where he smokes, and the specific piece almost chooses itself.

If you are still unsure, call us on 1 818-719-9885 or come by the Woodland Hills store. We would rather spend five minutes getting it right than have you guess.

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