WHEN a cigar smoker like me is not hiding in his own company, he is oft found haunting ‘tobacco sampling rooms’ and ‘lounges’. And normally it turns into a trip to the zoo, let me explain…

Communication has never been my forte so I’ve always made an extra effort to try and understand the world around me in a digestible chunks and stories. One of my favourite ways of thinking about people is general is as animals, it’s a mental shortcut for me to understand the salient features of a person, whether it be in a family, business or social setting.

The use of colourful adjectives carries over especially to Cuban cigars, which are never flavoured with anything other than the minerals in the water used to grow and ferment the tobacco leaves, the terroir and the cedar in which cigars are often stored and transported, and yet aficionados will explain their cigar experience in terms of notes of burnt caramel, coffee, sugar etc. All of these flavours and notes are just convenient expressions of language to communicate the nature of particular brands and vitolas as part of normal intercourse.

And so, I’m sticking with cigar smokers as animals. Creative zoomorphism.