A year of cigar reviews
A year of cigar reviews. we started to review cigars in January of 2019. In two days we will publish our top 25. And after a year of reviewing, it’s time to evaluate. What is good, what is wrong? What needs to be improved, and what needs to be unchanged? There are a few things that we will change, as we are not completely satisfied.
What is good?
We still like our concept of a video review with a written review, we won’t change that part. But we will probably make our videos a little more lively with better editing as we are doing an online course video editing. Things will improve. We also love our collaboration with cigarprofiler and their diagram. That won’t change either. The number of reviews, two a week on Monday and Friday, is also solid in our eyes. We also feel that our rating system is good. 40% of the points for technical matters such as looks, draw, smoke and burn. The other 60% goes to flavor.
What is not good?
We are happy with our high scores, but not with our low scores. We looked at the scorings of Cigar Aficionado and found scored below 90 to be quite low there. So while scoring cigars for reviews we had that in mind. That is wrong. Mediocre cigars could score 88 or 87 in our reviews. And someone we hold highly asked ‘if, in school, you scored an 87 out of 100, what would that mean?’. It would mean we did very good and we would be very pleased with ourselves. So what it comes down to, is that our high scores are fine as they are exceptional cigars. But our low scores are too high too. So what you, as readers will see in 2020 is a higher range of scores. The top ones will be in the mid-90s, but the lesser ones will be lower, much lower. The range of scores will be bigger.
Why didn’t we change that sooner?
We came to this conclusion months ago. But it would not be fair to change the ratings halfway the year. It would seriously mess with the Top 25 of 2019. So we struggled on with the rating. But from tomorrow, Friday the 3rd, we will review with a new mindset. More critical, harsher. Don’t be surprised to see cigars with scores in the 70s or, if the cigar manufacturer and our reviewer is very unlucky, even lower.
