Cigar Ratings… they’re not what they used to be… but were they ever?
We’ve all seen it, you even see it here on The Cigar Authority. One of our crew “rating” a cigar with a number….89, 90, 91…
what the hell does it even mean? When I was in school and got a 90 or 91 it was pretty much the same… it was an A. An 89, although quite good and almost an A was a B+, it was a close but no cigar grade… B equaled good. Who am I kidding, C (70 – 79) was more my speed “average” and it was “fair” and frankly “good enough” to get me moving along to the next grade. “D” was poor 60 – 69 but it was better than the “F” for Failure which was 59 or below. This is known as the 100 point scale.
Nowadays we see these number ratings called out in magazines and web sites around the globe… today let’s try and figure out what they really mean if anything, let’s dig in.
The lowest rating for a cigar in the 20+ years at Cigar Aficionado was 69 and that happened twice, once back in 1992 (Penamil No. 57 from the Canary Islands) and another time in 1996 (Ornelas No. 1 Vanilla – a Flavored Mexican Cigar) both of which I sold in my shops at that time. Both brands didn’t last very long after getting that slightly below 70, “average” rating, but sold pretty well before it. Those cigar ratings had power, both ways in those days, but times have changed.
Cigar Aficionado was the first I recall to ever rate a cigar with a number, taken from their Wine Spectator magazine which did the same. It’s been a long time, almost 20 years, since they gave a cigar a rating of 69. Cigars really must have 
improved world-wide over that time because the last time they rated a cigar anywhere even in the 70’s was a “79” and that was back in 2007. Before that was another 79 in 2004. That’s right, every cigar has been rated 80+ since then and the vast majority even before then. They’re all “good.”
Cigar Aficionado rated more than 17,000 cigars over all those years and just 2 were rated in the 60’s and both at the highest end “69”… just one point away from “Fair” or in their words “Average to Good”… and one of them was a vanilla flavored Mexican cigar. If 70 is “average” and “good” and almost ever cigar rated was above that, don’t you think the average is really not the average. You following me? Average is the middle, the sum of the list of numbers divided by the number of numbers in the list. Go ahead, read that last sentence again, you know you want to. So, if they, Cigar Aficionado, tasted and rated 17,000 cigars and the average rating came out to 88, that should be the average, and that seems to be more like it.
The average rating in not only Cigar Aficionado but most other publications is about an 88. A little higher in some and a bit lower in others. Nobody is handing out 69 ratings anymore, not because all cigars are so much better, but because most are not staying true to their ratings and frankly nobody cares anymore anyway. That’s right, I said it… nobody cares what someone else rates the cigar, that’s what I think and honestly not very many people care about what I think either. Don’t get me wrong, I think lots of people care about reading the reviews, taste outlines, strength profiles but attaching a number to it seems ridiculous to me and to lots of other people too. Who are you to tell me this cigar is rated 89 or 90? If you don’t like it and I do, then how can you recommend anything else to me? Our own Barry Stein who rates cigars on The Cigar Authority doesn’t like Connecticut shade tobacco very much… I heard him say it myself. So when he rates a cigar that uses Connecticut shade it probably loses a few points just because he doesn’t like it to begin with. I love it and I might add a point or two if I rated with numbers. You see… It just doesn’t work.
One web site I’ve seen uses Buy, Sell or Hold… I like it. Would they buy them now and smoke them or buy them and hold them for additional aging or hold off completely? Another site uses their wallet by rating Try One, Buy 5, Split a Box with a Friend or Buy the Box. Now that is effective and should hit home for everyone. As for me broadcasting on the Cigar Authority for over the past 5 years, I’ll tell you the flavors I get, how well it burns, the aroma, how long it lasts, the price and if it’s in my wheel house for strength and body but never if it’s in yours. If I say this is too full bodied for me, please don’t look at that as a negative towards the cigar or of me. I’ve been a buyer for cigars professionally (meaning I do this for a living) for 30 years and I buy lots of cigars, even cigars that I don’t particularly like personally. Too thin, too thick… too strong, too light… too expensive for what it is, too cheap… too spicy, not spicy enough, but I buy the best I can in my opinion for all the different taste profiles because we are all different and like and dislike different things. Our likes and dislikes are diverse, and as strong as I believe in my own opinion, it is just that… my opinion. I can’t put an accurate number on a cigar for you, and you can’t put a number on it for me. Maybe you can argue that you put the number on it for yourself and if your palate and favorites are much like mine, then maybe, just maybe I will agree with the number, but most likely not.
I remember when magazines started rating cigars with the 100 point rating system, and as a retailer, cigar smokers would come in and have the brands and specific sizes written down on paper with the number and they “had” to have that cigar and particularly in that size as no other size could compare. The higher the rating, the more the customer would like it. Today with the advent of the World Wide Web, with all the information that exists both true and false, numbers don’t mean a lot because there are people published online that say just the opposite.
Is that restaurant that opened up in your neighborhood last month any good? Look it up, some think it’s the best and others will not be back! Is that cigar any good, is it worth the money, and was it pleasant, did it burn well? If you are hearing more people say yes than no, give it a try. If almost everyone is saying “yes” you might want to buy a bit more. After you tried it yourself, you be the judge and jury and vote with your wallet. The retailer will hear you loud and clear as those are the only numbers that really matter.
How would you rate this article? I’m kidding, if you went this far, I got what I wanted.
The fact is taste is subjective and can only be rated by the individual smoking the cigar.
