Happy Boxing Day…or belated Merry Christmas…or Happy Hannukah…or Krazee Kwanzaa…whatever it is you’re celebrating this week. During this week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, our tradition at Leaf Enthusiast is to present what each individual writer thought were the best cigars of the year. We always start that off with a simple “listicle” of the cigars that earned “Perfect 10” honors from one of our reviewers.
Perfect 10 status means the reviewed cigars impressed enough to be considered a “perfect” smoking experience…at least on that day. While our criteria for achieving a perfect score is definitely more relaxed than most other sites, it’s still not all that frequent. I remember lots of really good cigars during 2016 and was surprised to find that I had only awarded 6 of them perfect scores. Keith and John each awarded a single cigar a perfect score during the year…part of that is probably because I reviewed approximately 150 cigars myself, Keith about 45, and John about 25-30…so I had many more opportunities to find perfection.
Perfect 10 scores do not automatically find their way into “Cigar of the Year” contention, although it’s very, very frequent. Perfect 10s don’t always hold up well…I’ve had several that I’ve awarded 10s to before, smoked later on and found them to not hit that level again. Could be changes in the blend over time, could be cigars not aging well in some cases, could be changes in my tastes…whatever the case, a perfect score today does not mean it’s going to be the best cigar on the market in 5 years. And that applies to every other publication’s “Cigar of the Year” picks, as well…just because they knocked it out of the park this year, doesn’t mean that cigar will be worth spit in 2020.
Tomorrow I’ll be posting my picks for Cigar of the Year 2016…Keith and Jon will be posting theirs on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively. We’re taking Friday off, but will be back next Monday to kick off 2017. I’ll be posting some “year that was/year that will be” thoughts at that time and on Tuesday I’m posting my first contender for Cigar of the Year 2017. Here are the cigars the Leaf Enthusiast reviewers described as “Perfect” in 2016:
