The
long-awaited annual ranking of Cigar Aficionado magazine is a long and
laborious process that lasts the entire year.
Indeed, on
every day of the year that passes, the veteran smokers involved in the
process—the editors of the magazine and the editors of the newsletter—sample
the cigars that the tasting coordinator buys in retail stores. This tasting is
done blind since, before the tasting panel, made up of five members, receives
the cigar, the original rings have been replaced with a simple number band and
a code has been created to identify it.
There are
four categories of classification of cigars: appearance, characteristics when
being smoked, flavor and general impression. Each category is scored with a
maximum of 25 points, which are then added to obtain the final score of the
cigar, whose maximum score is 100. In the event that, in the initial round, the
score of a cigar reveals variations that exceed a 15 to 20%, the tasting starts
again.
This
process of evaluating the cigars is done in the most objective way possible,
trying to make them stand out on their own merits, without any consideration of
the brand, the country of origin, the type of leaves with which they are made,
or the prices.
What is
the dynamic to select the first 25 cigars of the year?
As the
selection process is continuous, to choose the best qualified cigars of the
year, several steps are followed.
Step 1
The cigars
that obtained at least 90 points during the tastings of the year are reviewed
and with them the first round of a new tasting is assembled.
Step 2
They are
bought again, the band is changed and they are smoked again without the tasters
knowing the identity of the cigar.
Step 3
The highest
scoring cigars are smoked against each other over multiple rounds, until the
number is reduced to 25 cigars.
Step 4
Finally, a
new list of 25 cigars is drawn up: the cigar of the year and the remaining 24.
Normally, the winner is the cigar with the highest score, although the panel reserves the right to award the highest award to a finalist with other factors that may weigh in their favour. For example, if it is new to the market, if it has an attractive price, if it shows a subjective quality, or if there is something about it that sets it apart from others.
Some
interesting facts
Since its
inception in 1992, Cigar Aficionado considered it necessary to provide
consumers with information that would help them choose their cigars in the vast
tobacco market. For this reason, they presented their first tasting in the Fall
of that same year.
When the
premium cigar market boomed in 1995, they found it necessary to publish a
newsletter to broaden coverage. They called it Cigar Insider and it began to
circulate in January 1996. The criteria behind it is to complement the work of
the magazine by providing different information. For example, it rates entire
brands and provides cigar line information size by size, while the magazine
rates the cigars on their own.
The Top 25
is made from the highest ranked cigars during the year, both from the magazine
and from the newsletter.
