Cigar Aficionado..top 10 of 2010...

[TheRiddick]

Originally Posted by lyle23

Me personally, I dont look at their top 25 and say 'oh these are the best cigars out there' but, i do look at it as a buying guide, soo to speak. If there is a stick on there that I havent had yet I will try to get 1. My personal feeling is if it makes somebody's top whatever, it may be worth giving a shot.

Agree on all counts. Anything that says "consumer reviews" should be treated as a guide and not much else. Funny how people get bent of shape when their favorites don't make it on someone's list. As far as I can see it, it should be a "benefit" since whatever you like in such a case will be more readily available and probably stay underpriced. Applies to cigars and anything else...

Also, what many seem to miss is that cigars, unlike say, wine/beer/alcohol, are made of solids and vary from leaf to leaf no matter how well anyone ferments and treats them. They will be extremely close in best case scenarios, but nowhere near as homogenous as wine, for example. All barrels in a particular lot are blended together before bottling making each and every bottle taste the same right after bottling (cork and storage will affect each bottle with time, as the saying goes, There are no great wines, only great bottles). Great cigars are as even in stick to stick profile, but never the same (different number and size of veins in each leaf, a tiny bit more of sun exposure and subsequent fermentation here and there, etc.). Bottom line: there will be differences from bale to bale as well as leaf to leaf.

So, a cigar one tastes from a Left Coast retailer has a great probability of tasting slightly different than the one tasted from a lot shipped to NY. There is no mystery there.