Cigar Aficionado 2016 Top 10

[stearns]

Originally Posted by jjirons69

It's a pretty magazine with a lot of expensive crap. Even the cheap stuff is expensive.

I often wonder how the judging comes about - I mean I know how they score them, but who and how. Do they have 100 bandless cigars, say robusto sizes, and they blind taste them all? We all know that band warps the mind. Does one dude blind taste all 100 or is it a crowd? Do the same folks do it month in, month out? If you gave 4 of us 25 to test separately, especially blind, we'd get all kinds of values. The reveal would be like, "Oh, chit, we can't publish this!" Besides, RP would flip over backwards if his Sungrown robusto scored 70 points. He would yank his advertising! I don't think a sleek, beautiful, great-drawing, great-tasting Felipe Dominicana or Free Cuba (might be one on occasion) smoked blind with a score of 93 would ever make the listing on the reveal. Horsefeathers!

I've heard people "in the industry" but not CA employees try to explain the process, I don't remember the specifics but it's supposedly blind and "impartial." doesn't change the fact that those who advertise get higher ratings, and you start seeing ads an issue or two before the end of the year for those that end up the highest (other than the obligatory random cc so people can say "oooo I want to try that one day"). In my opinion that's the only objective part of the process, 8 times out of 10 if a top rated cigar isn't Cuban it is specifically advertised for in their magazine.

Truth is it sells the cigars to those that don't know, when the list comes out people would come into our shop and ask for everything from the top 10 and if we didn't have them they would get frustrated as if we are choosing not to stock what is unanimously the best cigar in the world because that's what the top people are saying. I don't know how much they pay CA to be in the top, maybe it's an unwritten understanding, but a higher rating in their listing = more stores buying the cigars because more people who casually ready CA who want to be an "aficionado" always want to smoke what the "aficionados" smoke. CA knows this and will not give away that power to something as silly as chance, or a group of "experts" who could possibly pick one that doesn't advertise with them. Maybe they only pick from a pool of advertisers, maybe they go off how many they get sent for free, I don't think we'll ever know.

**note I haven't picked up an issue in probably 4 years so I'm just going off my prior experience working in a cigar shop, but I don't think it's changed much