Cigar Aficionado

It has been yet another strong year for the handmade cigar industry. “The New Cigar Boom” appears to be holding steady, thanks to widespread, quality production and sustained demand for premium smokes. Cigar Aficionado dished out no shortage of high ratings, with multiple cigars earning the “Classic” status of 95 points and more in just about every issue. With an abundance of impressive cigars, the stage is set for an intriguing reveal of Cigar Aficionado’s Top 25 cigars of 2023.

We will start unveiling the Top 25 on Monday, December 18 and continue throughout the week. As always, the reveal is not the by-product of a year-end project, but a 12-month journey that involves hundreds and hundreds of cigars and countless blind tastings. 

Every week throughout the entire year, the Cigar Aficionado tasting panel is continuously smoking and rating cigars that are given to them via the tasting coordinator. The smokes vary greatly in makeup, including every size, shape, strength, country and brand. Every cigar is smoked blind. The tasting coordinator buys and collects the cigars and distributes them to the tasting panel with white, coded bands on each smoke, replacing the cigar’s identifying band (or bands). Each panelist smokes the coded cigars independently, delivering their ratings to the tasting coordinator, the only person in the process who knows the identity of the cigars, and not one of the tasters. The scores are averaged, and if there are outliers the cigars may be retasted before the final score is given. This process is used for scores in Cigar Aficionado and Cigar Insider throughout the year. 

Ultimately, a list of top-scoring cigars from the year is created, and cigars are rebanded and retasted in order to find out which will make it to the Top 25 and what cigar will be crowned No. 1. 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. 

The daily announcements will begin on December 18 and carry on through December 22. Each stage will be revealed at 10 a.m. Eastern on cigaraficionado.com. See the full schedule for the Top 25 reveal below:

Monday, December 18: 10, 9, 8
Tuesday, December 19: 7, 6, 5
Wednesday, December 20: 4, 3, 2
Thursday, December 21: Cigar of the Year
Friday, December 22: 11 through 25

Each stage of reveals will be accompanied by video reviews from executive editor David Savona and managing editor Gregory Mottola, alongside the full cigar details and tasting notes.

Last year, we saw a Cuban take home the Cigar of the Year honors for the first time since 2013 with the H. Upmann No. 2. Its 98-point rating tied the highest ever given to a Cigar of the Year, matching the E.P. Carrillo Pledge Prequel from 2020. Each of the top five cigars of last year earned scores of 95 points or higher. Will there be more this year? What country will take home the top spot for 2023? Which new cigarmaker will make a name for himself? Find out starting at 10 a.m., Monday, December 18 on cigaraficionado.com.

For all past winners, see the table below. 

Cigar Aficionado's Cigars Of The Year

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