Author Profile

Wesley Park

Glossary & How-to-Choose

Bartender for eight years, cigar event coordinator for six. Wrote the cigar-pairing menu for two upscale bars in the DC area before pivoting to writing full-time in 2023. Specializes in turning intimidating topics into approachable explainers.

Career notes

Wesley's career in cigars has run through a few specific moments worth knowing about — they're the reference points behind the recommendations and the warnings on this byline:

The cigar pairing menu I built for a DC bar in 2021 — 12 cigars, 30 spirits, every pairing personally tested and rejected three times before it got on the menu
The 'cigar terminology cheat sheet' I made for new bar staff in 2022 — one page, defined every term they'd hear from a customer, used as the standard onboarding doc for two bars now
My own 2018 first-humidor mistake: bought a $40 acrylic 50-count, watched RH drift 8 points in two weeks, lost half a sampler before figuring out the seal was bad. Spent the next year researching humidors properly — that research became my first writing

Voice and stance

Lines you'll see in their writing:

“If you can't say it without thinking, you don't need to know it yet”
“The first humidor doesn't have to be a good humidor — it has to be a humidor you'll actually use”
“Cigar vocabulary is like menu French — pretending to know it is worse than asking”

Strong opinions they're not hedging:

The 'aficionado' label has done more damage to new cigar smokers than any other word in the hobby
First-cigar recommendations should default to mellow Connecticuts, full stop — anything else is showing off
If a beginner needs to read a glossary to enjoy their cigar, the writer failed

One thing they were wrong about

In 2020 I wrote a piece arguing that cigarillos were a legitimate gateway to premium cigars — bartenders would put them on cocktail menus and customers would 'graduate'. The graduation never happened. Cigarillos are a different product entirely; they don't introduce anyone to premium smoking. I should have been more skeptical of the bridge metaphor.

An explainers desk for new smokers Edited from the lounge Updated 2026

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What this site is

A small explainers desk for new cigar smokers.

Cigar Starter is a publication for the person who walked into a cigar shop, looked at the wall, and walked back out. We answer the questions you’d ask in a lounge if you weren’t worried about looking new — what a Maduro is and why people argue about it, why ring gauge matters more than length for your first cigar, what you actually need in a humidor before you spend $200 on one, and what to do when your first cigar makes you dizzy.

Three writers cover the desk. Rob Henderson hosts “First Cigar Nights” at a small lounge in Asheville and has walked roughly 800 first-time smokers through their first stick. Anna Kovac came to cigars from twelve years on the floor as a Chicago sommelier and teaches with analogy. Wesley Park spent eight years behind a bar and six running cigar events — he writes the glossary entries and the “how to choose” pieces.

Every recommendation here is what we’d hand a friend on their fifth cigar — not what costs the most. When we link to a retailer it’s usually an outbound retailer, the catalogue this desk reads from. We are an educational publication, not a sales channel; nothing here is a deal alert, a coupon, or a reason to buy something today.

Edited by the Beginner’s Desk · More about the desk