In the same way that it affects a cigar's flavor when it has just been rolled.
The key here is the number of leaves used in the blend, which affects a cigar's complexity. If you season a pasta sauce with salt and pepper only, you're not going to get a very complex sauce. But if you throw in some oregano, some basil and a couple bay leaves, now you've got several flavors working together.
It's the same with cigars. A thin cigar blended with only two filler leaves just isn't going to offer the depth of flavor of a cigar made with four or five leaves.
Aging a cigar brings out its essence. It allows the flavors of the blend to mature, mellow and marry with one another. So it follows that the thicker the cigar—the more leaves used—the greater the benefits of aging. While it's true that tobacco strength is also an important factor in a cigar's ability to age—a lonsdale made with hearty Cuban-seed filler, for example, will probably age better than a mild Churchill with a Connecticut shade wrapper—that doesn't alter that general rule that, within a given blend, a thicker cigar will usually age better than a thin one. That's why panatelas and petit coronas, even strong ones, are rarely set aside for extended aging.
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