Cigar Aficionado

The reveal of Cigar Aficionado’s Top 25 cigars of 2025 is coming next week. Every year, these rankings are highly anticipated in the cigar industry, from both cigarmakers and consumers alike. But with the industry’s highest accolade often comes misconceptions. We’ve heard it all from readers and aficionados over the years, a litany of misguided notions on how we determine the list. You’ve likely heard them as well. Before we publish our best of the year next week, let’s walk through the real process for determining our Top 25 list.

First, it must be clear how a blind tasting works here at Cigar Aficionado. Every cigar we rate, whether for the Top 25 or a general review, is smoked blind by our panel of tasters. Here’s how that process works: 

• Our tasting coordinator purchases cigars at retail, and he then removes all the bands from the cigars in the test. 

• Every smoke is re-banded with a generic white label marked with a numeric code (known only to the tasting coordinator). This allows him to track the identity of the cigar while the panel cannot. 

• The tasting coordinator then passes the cigars out to our panel of editors. This way, they cannot ascertain the identity of the cigar they’re testing. They’re given no additional details, such as the name, country of origin, tobacco blend, price or any other prejudicial information. 

• The tasting coordinator is not a member of the panel. Each editor smokes independently, assessing their own score without discussing their findings, so as not to influence any outcome. 

The ultimate Top 25 reveal is not a last-minute project. Instead, it encapsulates a year’s worth of blind tastings and literally hundreds and hundreds of cigars. Every Top 25 cigar was first reviewed and published at some point in the calendar year either in Cigar Aficionado magazine or Cigar Insider, our twice-monthly newsletter. (Due to its publishing schedule of twice a month, there are some issues of Cigar Insider that are published after the Top 25 has been completed, so the ones that are published very late in the year go into contention for the following contest. And cigars rated in Cigar Insider follow the same blind tasting protocol as those smoked and rated for Cigar Aficionado.) 

Eventually, a list of the top-performing cigars is compiled, eliminating duplicates (if one brand has five top-scoring cigars, we select the highest, and in the case of a tie we select the one we feel best deserves a chance at making the list, emphasizing new releases over older releases) and removing cigars that are no longer on the market or that are in such short supply they are unavailable. The cigars on that top-performing list will then go through the blind review process all over again, with their identities known only to our tasting coordinator. 

This lineup of cigars is repurchased, re-banded with a new generic, coded band and distributed back out to our panel of tasters to smoke blind. Each cigar that makes it to this list goes through rounds of blind smoking in a kind of March Madness-like bracket to decide which ones are the best. Eventually, a winner separates from the field and the Top 25 Cigars of the year are sorted out based on their cumulative performance. 

It’s important to remember that consistency here is key. Not all cigars can replicate their fine performances earlier in the year, which is why some previously high-scoring cigars fail to make the final cut. The list rewards consistency and quality over novelty or popularity.

The Top 25 Cigars become the star of our January/February issue, but they will be revealed first to the world next week. Follow along with our Top 25 reveal, starting this coming Monday at 10 am Eastern on CigarAficionado.com. 

Each of the 10 highest-scoring cigars will be accompanied by video reviews from executive editor David Savona and managing editor Gregory Mottola.

See the full schedule below:

Monday, December 15: 10, 9, 8
Tuesday, December 16: 7, 6, 5
Wednesday, December 17: 4, 3, 2
Thursday, December 18: Cigar of the Year
Friday, December 19: 11-25

Join us next week.