Thanks both for the answers. I guess what I'm trying to get at is how good can home rolled cigars can be..? What kind of level is possible? Is the limited selection of tobacco going to stop the home roller achieving anything high end? I like the hobby aspect but would be disappointed if I could never reach the equivalent of the majority of commercial cigars.
Okay, let's take another stab at this...
The majority of "high end" commercial cigars I used to buy were not aimed at excellence. They were aimed at justifying an outrageous price. Take, for example, the embellished box. Any amount of gilding, varnish, art work, or fancy lining to a box raises the level of the cigar inside exactl;y zero. But it does raise the price. Same with the embossed band. Some gars may even have three rococo bands. Three bands does not make the cigar's tobacco any better than one band. It does raise the price.
The same is true of the blend. If you are expected to throw down fifteen bucks a stick, then you expect that stick in turn to knock your socks off. You want a smoke that will be worth the money. The guy blending that sock knocker is not interested in whether you can taste dinner tomorrow. He is instructed to give you mucho bang for your bucks. That doesn't make it a better blend; just a powerful blend. That, and a broad appeal.
That's not what I want,BTW. I want something flavorful in the mouth, aromatic in the nose, tasty on the tongue, a gar that I want to smoke down to a nub, with my socks on so I can still taste dinner. Dunno about you, but mellow is my aim. YMMV.
You do not have to appeal to a broad audience. You only have to appeal to you.
Take it as common sense that no farmer plants lower quality seed on purpose. Bugs may nibble, clouds may avoid, and so forth. Take it as common sense that every farmer wants to sell his whole crop to the nearest big house, or is even more likely directly contracted by a big house. Take it for common sense that everything at the big house is cured in the same shed in side by side pilones. Take it for common sense that one year or other there may be a surplus of criollo, or of criollo viso, or etc. Take it as common sense that if you had a team of skilled rollers at work, you would not waste their high paid skills sorting leaves for the smoothest and most consistent examples. Instead, you would employ a team of gals in the basment sorting and conditioning the leaves, pulling out the torn one and crinkled ones and thick ones. Between the surpluses and their culls, I imagine, is where we get our leaves.
I may be wrong in my conjectures. I'm just guessing. I don't actually know whether any big marque uses the T-13 viso I love, for instance, simply because they would be apt to say at most "Dominican filler", without telling me seed or priming.
The idea that we have access to fewer varieties than a commercial factory... that may not actually be the case. Because we have access to the culls and surpluses of any number of houses, we may therefore have more options than what they can do locally. Here today, for example, I sparked up a gar rolled with filler from Esteli and the DR, bound in leaf from Vuelta Abajo, and wrapped in leaf from Brazil. Would that be practical for a commercial house to attempt? Or would they be more likely to make what they can from what's grown on their own fields, petuned to their requirement? My great aunt, for example, took just pride in her espresso, as it came from beans picked that morning off carefully pruned shrubs along the stone wall in her mountain home, roasted that morning in her oven, ground by hand, and brewed with rain water from her cistern. It was fabulous. Cream from the cow in the neighbor's garden. What she did not have is the cosmopolitan selection of beans from all over the globe which is common to any humble coffee house. You and I, we can similarly buy a bag or two of baccy from all the major growing regions. So I would guess that our selection of leaves is far less limited. Find me a big house gar maker using Peruvian, Honduran, Ecuadorian, Dominican, Brazilian, etc., all at once. I have all these in my stash right here at hand now. Cameroon to Connecticut. Right here.