Every review on Top25Cigar.com scores a cigar across five categories, each rated on a scale of 1 to 10:
- Appearance — How does this cigar look to you? The cigar’s visual presentation: wrapper color, consistency, and construction quality at a glance.
- Construction — How well the cigar is made and how does it smoke. Draw, burn line, ash, and overall build quality.
- Flavor — The smoking experience itself. Complexity, balance, and how the flavors develop from start to finish.
- Value — How well the cigar delivers relative to its price. This is a bit relative, but we have all smoked cigars that have punched above their weight class, and at the same time, have some real dogs we paid good money for.
- Overall — The reviewer’s holistic impression of the cigar as a complete experience. Would you smoke this again?
How is the overall cigar rating calculated?
Each review produces a weighted average score. The five categories are averaged together, with the Overall score counting double — reflecting that a reviewer’s total impression carries the most weight.
All approved reviews for a cigar are then averaged together to produce the cigar’s rating on the site. The more reviews a cigar has, the more reliable that number becomes.