How I Rate a Cigar Experience
I evaluate cigars by how they behave — how their structure unfolds, how their intention reveals itself, and how their profile moves over time. I don’t score cigars the way traditional reviewers do. I’m not measuring construction, burn lines, or performing flavor‑note accounting. But instead of abandoning them, I use those traditional markers as context when evaluating my experience with a cigar.
I didn’t take a different approach just to be different. I simply wanted a way to evaluate cigars that reflects how I actually experience them — not by tallying flavor notes, construction, and burn lines, but by paying attention to how those factors shape a cigar’s behavior as it unfolds.
My rating isn’t a flavor score. It measures how convincingly the cigar expresses the qualities that matter to me in a smoking experience.
The Seven Pillars of the Experience
These are the criteria I use to evaluate the encounter. They’re not weighted. They’re not rigid. They’re the structural beams that define whether a cigar feels authored, intentional, and alive.
1. Structure
How the cigar holds itself together as a system. Does it have a clear backbone? Does it maintain integrity under heat and time?
2. Identity
Does the cigar know what it wants to be? Does it express a coherent core, or does it drift?
3. Tension
The energy of the experience. Does the cigar have brightness, movement, or upward motion? Or does it compress or tighten? Or is it pulled directionally? None is better than another, but it’s important that there is some sort of energy.
4. Intention
Does the cigar feel engineered or accidental? Are its choices deliberate, or does it stumble into its profile?
5. Refinement
Not smoothness — clarity. Does the cigar resolve its ideas cleanly, or does it collapse into noise?
6. Architecture
How the components integrate. Does the cigar behave like a designed system with internal logic?
7. Emotional Arc
What did the cigar do to me? Did it create lift, tension, stillness, or resonance? Did it move?
These seven pillars form the basis of the score. They are the grammar that I use in my reviews.
How the Numerical Score Works
The score is not a tally of flavors or technical performance. It’s a holistic reading of how fully the cigar fulfilled the seven pillars.
- 94–100 — The cigar expresses its identity with clarity, motion, and intention. It feels authored. It has a narrative arc. It leaves an imprint.
- 90–93 — The cigar is coherent, structured, and purposeful. It may not be transformative, but it delivers a meaningful experience.
- 87–90 — The cigar has ideas but lacks execution. It may be static, unfocused, or inconsistent in its motion. A 90 is usually my minimum score to earn a review, but there are exceptions, especially if a cigar has something to say.
- Below 87 — The cigar feels accidental, unresolved, or structurally incoherent. It may have flavor, but it lacks a defined experience. These cigars never appear on the site. I have a personal policy to avoid publishing negative reviews. The world has enough negativity; I don’t need to add to it. If a cigar falls below this threshold, I simply don’t write about it.
Think of the score as a reading, not a tally. A way of capturing the totality of the encounter in a single number: a signal strength indicator for the experience.
The Score Has Consequences
The score ultimately determines how a cigar may fit into my long‑term rotation. Once a cigar shows how fully it fulfills the seven pillars, my buying decisions follow a simple pattern:
- 94 and above — Automatic box‑worthy. A cigar at this level has enough structure, identity, and intention to earn a permanent place in my rotation. I will probably buy a box without hesitation, and it could become part of what I smoke regularly.
- 90–93 — Strong, coherent, and purposeful. These cigars deliver a meaningful experience, but they need the right price to justify box space. I’ll buy a box only on a genuinely compelling deal; otherwise, they stay in the “selective‑restock” category.
- 87–90 — Fiver or single‑stick territory. These cigars may have interesting ideas or moments, but they don’t fully resolve across the seven pillars. I’ll revisit them occasionally, but they won’t occupy long‑term real estate in my humidor.
- Below 87 — These are a “never buy” for me. Also, I will — and have — politely decline one if I was given it for free. Life is too short to smoke sub-par cigars!
This keeps the rating system honest: the number isn’t abstract. It has consequences. It determines what I buy, what I revisit, and what becomes a permanent part of my rotation. The score is a reading of the whole encounter, and that reading shapes how I buy and what I keep in my rotation.
Does Price Factor In?
Of course it does — just not in the score itself. The score tells me whether a cigar is something I’d buy again and whether it earns box space. After that, price comes into play within the reality of what I can reasonably afford. For example, I gave a high rating to the Zino Platinum Crown Tubo Gordo, but at $58 a cigar, spending nearly $600 on a box of ten isn’t practical.
While my scoring system flattens the playing field by measuring the experience, price still matters when it comes to how I categorize cigars. I group them into premium and luxury based on what they cost, not how they score. The score tells me whether I want the cigar again; the price tells me how often I can realistically buy it.
Price doesn’t change the score, but it does change how I classify a cigar — whether it’s something I can buy freely or something I reserve for specific moments.
Why I Score This Way
Because cigars are not consumables to me. They are encounters — engineered systems with identity, tension, and motion. My Experience Rating is a way of mapping that encounter. It doesn’t tell you what the cigar tastes like, but what it does.
