They are “first cousins” of the wine cabinets; they are called cigar cabinets or climatised cigar cabinets. They serve two essential purposes for the proper conservation of cigars: temperature, always around 18 degrees, and humidity, always around 70%. Cigars are more delicate than wine. Wine can stand a fluctuation in the conservation temperature from 12 to 15 degrees and its humidity from 50% to 75% and absolutely nothing happens. Cigars, on the other hand, will not tolerate that margin of oscillations.
Always remember that the ideal is 12 degrees and 60-70% humidity for the conservation of wine and 18 degrees and 70% humidity for cigars. High quality cigar cabinets include two controls: one for temperature and the other for humidity. The interior walls of the climatised cigar cabinets are recommended to be made of natural cedar, as as well as trays. They should never be varnished or this would automatically contaminate the smell and taste of cigars, making it unusable. Many people use their wine cabinet to store cigars and we are sorry to say that this does NOT work, as the humidity in a wine cabinet is not enough. In addition, 18 degrees is NOT the recommended temperature for wine, since the ideal temperature is 12-15 degrees for wine and 18 degrees for cigars, which means that one of the two products would not be at 100% of its optimum state. Always use climatised cigar cabinets including electronic humidifiers with a distilled water tank and avoid the typical sponges that are “professionally” worthless.