Phase 2: Bourbon Series
The Bourbon & Cigar Pairing Guide
Beyond the beginner principles. 50+ specific pairings across mash bills, proofs, and cigar profiles for the drinker ready to get serious.
Cigars & Bourbon
Phase 2: Bourbon Series
Cigars & Bourbon
Beginner's Pairing Guide
Miguel started pairing cigars and bourbon the way most people do: badly. A peated scotch with a delicate Connecticut wrapper. A wheated bourbon with a full-bodied Nicaraguan ligero bomb. Each combination wrong in its own way. This book is the framework that took twenty years to build, condensed into the version a beginner can use tonight.
Launches 2026-05-19. Drop your email and we will tell you the day it goes live on Amazon.
Inside this book
- How flavor works in both bourbon and cigars (the overlap is bigger than you think)
- The 4 pairing principles that work 90% of the time
- 20 specific bourbon and cigar pairings, ranked by accessibility
- What to drink with mild, medium, and full cigars
- What to smoke with wheated, high-rye, and Kentucky-straight bourbons
- How to host a pairing flight without it feeling pretentious
About the author
Miguel Solano
Lead Author, The Modern Cigar Library
Miguel Solano started smoking cigars in 1997 when his friend Augusto Reyes handed him a Fuente Hemingway Short Story at a lounge in Coral Gables. That cigar changed his life. Since then he has built a career in the premium cigar industry that has taken him to factories in Nicaragua, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic, to fermentation warehouses in Cuba, and to every PCA trade show since the late 1990s. He consults with boutique producers, maintains relationships with distributors and retailers across the Americas, and writes the books he wishes had existed when he was learning. He lives in South Florida with his wife Liliana, who manages the spreadsheets that track his cigar spending, and their cigar friends who fill the screened porch his late father Gerardo used to sit on every night.
More about Miguel SolanoOther books in the Bourbon Series series
Phase 2: Bourbon Series
Master Class: Cigars & Bourbon
The advanced framework. Vertical tastings, allocated bourbons, single barrels, and the fusion principles for the pairer who has graduated from CB1 and CB2.
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Drop your email and we will tell you when Cigars & Bourbon goes live, plus updates on the rest of the series.