Does Halfwheel ever have anything nice to say about CCs

[Çnote]

Full disclosure, I have had a personal relationship with the Dallas office of HW for some years. If they don't chime in, I'll bring this thread to their attention next time I see one of them.

I'd say that HW in general is fair in keeping a consistent methodology in reviewing cigars, including only reviewing fresh stock except when specifically noted of redux and the annual rare stock reviews. 

I don't think their reviews of CC move the needle anyway, stock will be sold no matter how harsh the review. Considering they are not hobbyists as most of us here at FoH are, their implied reasons for 'low scores' are just under the microscope that has been brought by a new member who hasn't even bothered to introduce himself.

While it is true that they cannot receive any HSA advertising funds, they do go to Cuba and other international festivals where CC are going to be presented. I personally think they enjoy CC, but I'm not in a position to speak for them. HW does not have a vested interest in selling cigars, but functions as a media outlet for cigar news, check their history and archives. They just create content and sell advertising; in that they are very good at what they do.

I think this dovetails into the rating thread that we had a month or so ago; at the end of the day, numerical ratings are a inefficient way to convey complex highly personal opinions. Often the TL:DR of text contains more. The already linked and quoted HW review of the PCC 898 that scored 75 has a postscript text, scathing Cuban QC and basically saying this could be a review of 3 bad cigars or a bad box.

Anyway, I'll make more popcorn and watch this thread....

 

[CaptainQuintero]

  I've always enjoyed what I've read on HW. I always take scores with a pinch of salt wherever they are from as taste is subjective.

  It's a very fair point to raise for construction. Let's face it, Cuban cigars have awful quality control and it wouldn't stand in any other business or market. It's only allowed to exist because it's either deal with it or don't smoke Cubans. If you can't get hands on to pick yourself or have someone you trust pick for you how many of us would drop coin on blind boxes? It's insane when you take a step back and look at what you have to do to give yourself the best chances of getting the product you should be getting.

  If you receive a box of Cubans you should get someone that reflects the cost, if you get duds then rip into Cuba, and give a score reflecting that.

  Can you imagine buying a TV and at best you know that only 22 put of 25 TV channels will work, and possibly you'll get a TV where every single TV channel is unwatchable? Then the general consensus amongst the tech community is "That's just TVs being TVs"

  I love CC but if you are really into them you create a multi layer bubble of excuses and self protection to enable you to enjoy them. It's only fair that Cuba gets the deserved flack, we probably don't realise how much they actually deserve and what the general public would shake their head at.

  Imagine if Fuente/Pardon etc were rolling CC with a Cuban draw and all the regular Fuente/Padron quality control in place. That's right, it's difficult to even imagine, its like an exercise in science fiction.  For better or worse, that's how much we put up with CC construction issues; it seems alien to us to imagine a Cuban cigar with perfect construction, the kind that is routinely mass produced next door to Cuba

[Cigar Surgeon]

11 hours ago, El Presidente said:

I should point out that I am in no way a defender of Cuban cigar QC! Crikey, it is a disgrace. 

I do however struggle to light up a Perdomo, RP, even many a Davidoff and not wonder, "if this were a CC, it would be panned for it's straw-like draw" 

 

I've done a reasonable number of CC reviews at this point. In my experience while CCs are more likely to be tight or plugged, the problem is not nearly as bad as some might make it.

In the past 15 months of reviews we've had more concerning draw problems with NCs than CCs. 

[charlieminato]

Hi Everyone,

Charlie from halfwheel here. Thanks to Kevin for pointing out the thread to me via email. It's certainly an interesting conversation and a pretty educated one about the reviewing approach at our website.

I'm happy to try to answer most specific questions, though I don't want to litigate out specific reviews one way or the other.

Some broad things that might help:

1. We are biased towards Cuban cigars (and all cigars) — We don't review cigars blind for a number of reasons. In this specific conversation, outside of regular Vegueros reviews, I'm not sure how much that would matter for reviews of Cuban cigars. Regardless, we all have biases and we try to check them at the door as much as possible. Given the breadth of the types of cigars we review, we are oftentimes reviewing cigars that we otherwise wouldn't buy for our own consumption. That's led to both positive/negative experiences. One thing that I will say is that our biases regarding Cuban cigars are probably the other way from what many would think. I can only speak for myself but I smoke a disproportionate ratio of Cuban cigars to non-Cuban cigars (compared to our review percentage) when not reviewing cigars. It's maybe not 50/50, but it's over 1/3 Cuban cigars these days. Of course, I also find myself throwing away some of those Cuban cigars five minutes in for poor draws or underfermented tobacco compared to non-Cubans. Brooks/Patrick probably don't skew as Cuban as I do, but it's a lot more Cubans than our published reviews would lead you to believe.
2. We are trying to level the playing field as much as possible — For those of you that have suggested we get a Cuban review specialist or not focus as much on construction when it comes to Cuban cigars, I think the purpose of our reviews might get lost a bit. We try to evaluate a $2.50 bundle cigar the same as a $500 Davidoff, the same as a 7 x 70. If we were to change the approach of how we go into the reviews, score the cigars, etc. —what would be the point of producing those numbers everyone gets so caught up against. I could, to some degree, understand if we approached vintage cigars differently, or had a scoring system that factored in price, but for a variety of reasons, we decided against those things. I don't think it's fair (either way) to evaluate Cuban cigars differently simply because of where they originate, though it does say a lot about the inherent problems.
3. Our goal isn't to produce the highest scores/performance possible — Some of you have suggested that we aren't aging Cuban cigars long enough to evaluate them at peak performance (we agree with you!), but that isn't the goal of our website. We are trying to produce content for consumption and to some degree, trying to figure out what the best new cigar is of any given year. When we are able to find ways to get our hands on Reservas/Gran Reservas, Cuba has a strong shot of making that list. If we are just going to evaluate all the other new items when they are fresh, well, you guys know how that goes. One thing I really struggle with when I hear the complaints about not giving the Cuban cigars enough time (in years) is that we just don't know how long that's going to be and there's no easy way to predict that. One other thing, we aren't trying to be wine reviewers telling you how good we think the cigar is going to be in six years. It's how good is the cigar when we were smoking it.

Some other tidbits:

• @NSXCIGAR did some great work analyzing our numbers but I think his decision to filter out the high-end stuff is flawed, particularly given that for the first few years of our website, when we were disproportionately reviewing the higher-end Cuban and non-Cuban cigars. Do I think that would reverse what the numbers say? No. 
• One thing that I find interesting whenever people focus on the scores is that most of our readers probably have no idea what our scores are supposed to mean. For reference, an 88-point score is a cigar we'd recommend buying a box of 20 of based on its performance. A 91 at halfwheel is a really tough score to get, it's not the same as a 91 elsewhere, including probably on your own scoring system.
• For those that think it's a money thing, eight of the cigars on our 2020 Top 25 list came from companies that advertised with us during 2020, and the eight number might even be generous given two of the companies. That's not uncommon for halfwheel's Top 25. It also means the majority of our advertisers did not have a single cigar on the list.
• As the person that handles the scheduling of reviews, we always try to give the cigars 30 days of rest between when they show up at the office and when the reviews gets published. Sometimes this number will dip down to 25 days, but never below that. Furthermore, for Cubans it's almost always longer. When ordering from overseas, my general rule is 30 days + however long it took for the cigars to show up.
• Someone mentioned vendors might be to blame. We buy from a wide range of vendors, sometimes stores and sometimes people, including some that have commented on this thread. At the end of the day, we are trying to replicate the real world scenarios of smoking these cigars and not trying to find the unicorn boxes that were hand-selected and most consumers will never see. (That's why we stopped reviewing festival cigars, which tend to be very different from the cigars that come out.)
• For those of you that suggest we might prefer looser draws. My favorite vitola has long been a lancero, Brooks likes petite coronas and Ninfas and Patrick would probably be pretty similar. If everything else outside of draw/size is equal, I'm guessing the reviewers are picking cigars 42 ring gauge and under.
• Someone suggested that Fuente and Davidoff are a similar size company to Habanos S.A., I don't think that is true. If we take all the numbers on their face value, Cuba is making about 1/4 of the number of cigars that the U.S. imports. Cuba said it exported 93.9 million handmade cigars in 2018, there were 386 million "large cigars" imported to the U.S. (wholesale-wise) that year. Fuente or Davidoff are not 1/4 of the U.S. market.

I really appreciate all of the thoughts you guys have put in here, always a bit surreal to see how much people care about our website.

[Carrie Nation]

Consider this…Last year, there was only one Cuban on their top 25 list. The year before, there were no Cubans on the list at all. Zero. Nothing for 2019, yet there were two non-Cuban Cohibas on the list. Sit on that for a moment. 

 

Furthermore, the most recent reviews they’ve done of Cubans have been terribly inaccurate. 

 

Here’s my take-away: they penalize Cubans because they don’t taste like the Nicaraguans they’re mostly used to. Just like some wine drinkers will penalize a Burgundy for not tasting like a California Cab. 

 

It has nothing to do with advertising dollars or anything like that. It’s simply a question of inexperienced palates not understanding what they’re smoking. They’d probably deny it, but they’re Cuban rookies who smoke an EL or RE every once in a while. That’s all.

 

[Cigar Surgeon]

12 minutes ago, charlieminato said:

Some other tidbits:

• @NSXCIGAR did some great work analyzing our numbers but I think his decision to filter out the high-end stuff is flawed, particularly given that for the first few years of our website, when we were disproportionately reviewing the higher-end Cuban and non-Cuban cigars. Do I think that would reverse what the numbers say? No. 
• One thing that I find interesting whenever people focus on the scores is that most of our readers probably have no idea what our scores are supposed to mean. For reference, an 88-point score is a cigar we'd recommend buying a box of 20 of based on its performance. A 91 at halfwheel is a really tough score to get, it's not the same as a 91 elsewhere, including probably on your own scoring system. 

I think Aaron's article at DP on when a 90 isn't a 90 shows Halfwheel is one of the most consistent scoring sites out there and hasn't suffered from score creep. 

We don't chat often enough (or maybe it's too often for you!) but the summary commentary on reviews as of late seems to be that the scoring system could use a tweak. Maybe I'm reading between the lines too much. 

[Bri Fi]

@charlieminato thanks for your thoughtful response. I enjoy your reviews and the hard work you put into it.
 

There are some very knowledgeable guys in here and I love to see the back-n-forth. Didn’t someone say they were making popcorn? 

[NSXCIGAR]

49 minutes ago, charlieminato said:

@NSXCIGAR did some great work analyzing our numbers but I think his decision to filter out the high-end stuff is flawed, particularly given that for the first few years of our website, when we were disproportionately reviewing the higher-end Cuban and non-Cuban cigars.

Hi Charlie, excellent of you to join and give your input. 

I did indeed omit the high-end stuff but obviously a 1982 Dunhill Estupendos isn't comparable to a recent regular production CC. True vintage or ultra-premium Cuban production just isn't a fair representation of CCs in general. Prices are many multiples higher than regular production and one would naturally expect higher quality. I think my exclusion of ultra-premium CCs is actually more fair to the NCs and I'm trying to look at trends, not margins.

I also totally understand your absolute score numbers may appear lower than some other publications. I have no issues with that. What I'm having trouble reconciling is that it appears much more likely that a NC is going to occupy the higher ranges of scores (88-93) than a CC. It is true that the highest scores (95-99) are dominated by CCs but again, these are super premiums that I don't think it's fair to include and the sample size is also too low to fairly analyze.

Absolute NC scores run the gamut as well and I don't see a statistical trend in terms of absolute score or average score among all NCs. I do however see a trend in the probability and clustering of scores for NCs relative to CCs. Again, it appears the probability a NC is going to score 88-93 is higher with sample distribution taken into account. In other words, a given NC is more likely to score in the 88-93 range than a given CC. 

I'm no statistician and the data can only be organized by raw score and date but I'd like to see a full statistical analysis done. Unfortunately the sheer amount of data (3000+ reviews) that would have to be inputted manually is daunting. 

So my conclusion is that if there were no bias one would expect there to be a equal likelihood of any given cigar scoring in any particular range--particularly the mean or "golden" range of 88-93. We don't see that. My conclusion is that there does appear to be a bias toward NCs in that they appear more likely to score 88-93. What that bias is or why it's there I can't determine. It's slight, to be sure, but with the sheer number of reviews on HW it eventually shows itself in the data. 

And again, this is my basic, elementary analysis of the data. All the data would have to be plugged in and analyzed by a program or statistician to confirm it but it does appear to be the case to my basic analysis. 

 

[Nino]

41 minutes ago, charlieminato said:

When we are able to find ways to get our hands on Reservas/Gran Reservas, Cuba has a strong shot of making that list. If we are just going to evaluate all the other new items when they are fresh, well, you guys know how that goes. One thing I really struggle with when I hear the complaints about not giving the Cuban cigars enough time (in years) is that we just don't know how long that's going to be and there's no easy way to predict that. One other thing, we aren't trying to be wine reviewers telling you how good we think the cigar is going to be in six years. It's how good is the cigar when we were smoking it.

• Someone mentioned vendors might be to blame. We buy from a wide range of vendors, sometimes stores and sometimes people, including some that have commented on this thread. At the end of the day, we are trying to replicate the real world scenarios of smoking these cigars and not trying to find the unicorn boxes that were hand-selected and most consumers will never see. (That's why we stopped reviewing festival cigars, which tend to be very different from the cigars that come out.)

 

Thank you for the detailed explanation - I do agree with your comments, good job.

[Cigar Surgeon]

4 minutes ago, NSXCIGAR said:

Absolute NC scores run the gamut as well and I don't see a statistical trend in terms of absolute score or average score among all NCs. I do however see a trend in the probability and clustering of scores for NCs relative to CCs. Again, it appears the probability a NC is going to score 88-93 is higher with sample distribution taken into account. In other words, the average NC is more likely to score in the 88-93 range than the average CC. 

I think you would find the work Aaron did breaking down the score for the year as well as the year over year view interesting. While it isn't broken out into CC vs NC (our group doesn't think that way for reviews) I think it goes a long way to giving you some of the analysis you're after.

https://developingpalates.com/editorials/cigar-editorials/cigar-editorial-90-not-90-3-years-later/

[Çnote]

1 hour ago, Carrie Nation said:

They’d probably deny it, but they’re Cuban rookies who smoke an EL or RE every once in a while. That’s all.

This simply isn't true, sorry.

 

1 hour ago, Bri Fi said:

Didn’t someone say they were making popcorn? 

Ha! 

[charlieminato]

17 minutes ago, NSXCIGAR said:

True vintage or ultra-premium Cuban production just isn't a fair representation of CCs in general.

 

This is where our data gets a bit problematic. There's basically four sets of data in here:

• Pre-halfwheel Smoking Stogie reviews (which is mostly just bonkers stuff and Tatuaje/Illusione/Viaje LEs with some random "normal" things mixed in for inexplicable reasons.)
• Pre-halfwheel TheCigarFeed reviews (lots of lanceros)
• halfwheel Scoring V1 (high focus on limited edition and prerelease NC cigars, less focus on CCs in general, mixture of new/old CCs/NCs)
• halfwheel Scoring V2 (mostly new cigars outside of CC ELs/ERs/ETC)

I'm not sure that I could argue that our reviews are a fair representation of the non-Cuban cigar market in general. It's a decent—but skewed—representation of new cigars in a given year, but it's not indicative of what one would expect to see in any store. (For example, there are almost no reviews from mainstays like Ashton and Padrón, few reviews or regular production Cuban cigars, lots of random ERs, etc...)

Quote

What I'm having trouble reconciling is that it appears much more likely that a NC is going to occupy the higher ranges of scores (88-93) than a CC.

I get that the numbers can conclude that a Cuban cigar only has a 5 percent chance of getting 91+ with your filters. I'm not sure I'm surprised, quite frankly, I'm guessing that if we gave the same exact cigars and scoring method to four people that commented in that thread, I'm guessing the numbers would be pretty similar unless there are members here that want to argue that fresh Cuban cigars are as enjoyable today than the fresh non-Cuban cigars we often review.

One other thing I didn't mention earlier, we aren't trying to make the numbers look nice/funny/special/etc. Even without "fudging the numbers" there's very easy ways to manipulate it. Some publications will only put their highest scores in the magazines, meaning you never really see the lower scores. Other reviewers will openly admit that they won't publish scores below X.

We try to just be honest and don't really care about the ramification of a high/low score in regards to our audience, advertisers, professional relationships, Developing Palate's analysis, etc.

--

I appreciate the time you've been spent thinking about this. I agree with about 99 percent of the conclusions because the numbers are the numbers. 

[Çnote]

Where is the OP?

[Akela3rd]

Where is the OP?

Farted and left the room it seems...

Sent by spooky action at a distance

[Cigar Surgeon]

Just now, Akela3rd said:

Farted and left the room it seems...

Sent by spooky action at a distance
 

[Kevin48438]

Hi Charlie, thanks for joining!

1 hour ago, charlieminato said:

Someone suggested that Fuente and Davidoff are a similar size company to Habanos S.A., I don't think that is true. If we take all the numbers on their face value, Cuba is making about 1/4 of the number of cigars that the U.S. imports. Cuba said it exported 93.9 million handmade cigars in 2018, there were 386 million "large cigars" imported to the U.S. (wholesale-wise) that year. Fuente or Davidoff are not 1/4 of the U.S. market.

That would be me.  I haven’t found a good apples to apples comparison chart for all of the companies.  What I’m going with is that those 3 companies reported about $480-$550 million in revenues, parsed from various and potentially unreliable sites. Scandinavian, Imperial, Altadis, General, the huge companies (in the $billions) don’t parcel out (that I’ve seen) handmade cigars from their other products so I didn’t mention them. Davidoff (this includes Camacho and other brands) and Fuente (includes some JC Newmans and other brands) are largely handmade cigars and do pretty well outside the US as well.  Especially in China which is becoming big and even bigger.  If you go to a non LCDH store in Dubai or Singapore, they will be seen. Again, this isn’t NSXCIGAR level research....

 

I would also like to make the following points on the continual NC vs CC debate and what I hope my participation on this forum demonstrates:

- I have high experience with NCs, much lower experience with CCs.

- This is a self-selected group that is naturally going to be biased toward CCs.

- I think I can be helpful to those who would like to broaden their horizons and wade through some the NC chaos to find some that they would like.  What’s wrong with more cigars?  If nothing else, it can help one appreciate their favorites even more.

- Cigars should unite people, not divide them.

[LLC]

I enjoy the site and information provided. I don’t get too caught up on what cigars score in a review as I’ll form my own opinion. I don’t smoke nc’s and if they always rate higher than Cubans, it would not change what I smoke. 

They are providing a service and if people like it they will continue to go to their site; if they don’t they are less likely to keep returning.

What we would each score a cigar is subjective and there is no right answer. What our baseline is and how we rate a cigar is also subjective. 
 

it’s quite simple, if you don’t like they way they do things, don’t go to the site. I for one will continue to enjoy it for what I want to get out of it.

 

[NSXCIGAR]

50 minutes ago, charlieminato said:

I get that the numbers can conclude that a Cuban cigar only has a 5 percent chance of getting 91+ with your filters.

I wouldn't interpret that in that way. Yes, only 5% of CCs score 91 but I don't think that's a pertinent comparative analysis to NCs. I The likelihood of an NC scoring 91 is probably about the same but as I describe below would be slightly higher than a CC.

I would put much more stock in the simple conclusion that it appears more likely a given NC will score 88-93 than a given CC. That's where I think the bias shows itself. Again, I don't know what the bias is or why it's there but it does appear more likely a given NC will score in that range than a CC. In other words, if 5% of CCs score 91, 5 + n % of NCs would score 91. 

 

1 hour ago, Cigar Surgeon said:

I think you would find the work Aaron did breaking down the score for the year as well as the year over year view interesting. While it isn't broken out into CC vs NC (our group doesn't think that way for reviews) I think it goes a long way to giving you some of the analysis you're after.

https://developingpalates.com/editorials/cigar-editorials/cigar-editorial-90-not-90-3-years-later/

That's focusing on the scores themselves, not relative score numbers like I am. Absolute scores don't matter to me, nor do scores between publications. What I'm looking at is how that score is arrived at and comparing scores between categories (CC vs NC in this case) for one publication (HW) which takes how they arrived at the scores out of the equation. The score is the score and I'm looking at that. The methodology comes in later if any biases are detected.

I've isolated a category which I've labelled the "golden" range of HW scores of 88-93. It appears less likely that any given CC will score in that range than any given NC. That to me confirms a bias. There's no other explanation. There could be many reasons for a bias--I'm not drawing any conclusions but the fact remains that it is less likely a CC will score 88-93 than a NC.

We could go further and look at country by country, age of cigar and all sorts of things to isolate the bias. For example, it might turn out the bias disappears when age of the cigar is adjusted for. There you have it--perhaps the CCs have less age or more age and that accounts for the comparative difference. We just don't know. The easiest, most bird's eye look shows there is a correlation between CC and NC and scores in the 88-93 range. There's other data between the two that could account for the differences but that would require a full data input and deeper statistical dive than I have time for.

[Cigar Surgeon]

54 minutes ago, NSXCIGAR said:

That's focusing on the scores themselves, not relative score numbers like I am. Absolute scores don't matter to me, nor do scores between publications. What I'm looking at is how that score is arrived at and comparing scores between categories (CC vs NC in this case) for one publication (HW) which takes how they arrived at the scores out of the equation. The score is the score and I'm looking at that. The methodology comes in later if any biases are detected.

I've isolated a category which I've labelled the "golden" range of HW scores of 88-93. It appears less likely that any given CC will score in that range than any given NC. That to me confirms a bias. There's no other explanation. There could be many reasons for a bias--I'm not drawing any conclusions but the fact remains that it is less likely a CC will score 88-93 than a NC.

We could go further and look at country by country, age of cigar and all sorts of things to isolate the bias. For example, it might turn out the bias disappears when age of the cigar is adjusted for. There you have it--perhaps the CCs have less age or more age and that accounts for the comparative difference. We just don't know. The easiest, most bird's eye look shows there is a correlation between CC and NC and scores in the 88-93 range. There's other data between the two that could account for the differences but that would require a full data input and deeper statistical dive than I have time for.

It was less about publications and more about showing the bell chart for HW specifically, as well as how the trend changes year over year.

If you lump all scores, all time together to make some sort of analysis you're ignoring the impact that a particular years releases might have on scoring.

Playing Devil's advocate: What if 2017 happened to be a bad release year for CCs and HW's scoring reflected that trend?

When we do our own internal analysis at the end of the year we break out:

• Average scoring by reviewer
• Number of cigars reviewed by country
• Average score by reviewer, by country
• Number of cigars by price range
• Average score by reviewer, by price range
• Number of cigars by sponsor / non-sponsor
• Average score by reviewer, by sponsor / non-sponsor
• Number of cigars by sample provided / purchased
• Average score by reviewer, by provided / purchased

Then we post the whole thing online.

Charlie does a great job of posting their data breakdown (each year I believe) and this is probably the information you're after in terms of relative scoring by country:

https://halfwheel.com/2020-reviews-in-review/385913/

 

[charlieminato]

58 minutes ago, NSXCIGAR said:

I've isolated a category which I've labelled the "golden" range of HW scores of 88-93. It appears less likely that any given CC will score in that range than any given NC. That to me confirms a bias. There's no other explanation. There could be many reasons for a bias--I'm not drawing any conclusions but the fact remains that it is less likely a CC will score 88-93 than a NC.

There are a number of other explanations, starting with that Cuban cigars could be worse.

Deep breath.

I wouldn't stand behind that explanation but it's a very easy one to propose that would explain things. My stance—which I don't think is too unique—is that Cuban cigars oftentimes aren't close to their optimal smoking condition within the first year. It's not always the case. Sometimes they get worse. Sometimes they are plugged and it's irrelevant. But a lot of times, they aren't in great shape, and more importantly, pretty far away from their peak. 

--

Secondly, some people have sort of beaten around the bush of why construction is key for our scores.

Construction is less than 1/3 of the scoresheet's total points. However, the variability that exists within the data is largely in this category. While flavor makes up the majority of the total points, we—like most people—don't use the wide range of scores for flavor like we do for construction. 

In simplistic terms, it's more or less never happened that a cigar only earns 10 percent of its flavor points, it's actually really challenging for a cigar to lose half the flavor points. While I might not like how cigar tastes, it's rarely offensive. That being said, cigars fail to get half of their available construction points all the time. 

While we are talking about a very small part of the score—the entire "did I have to relight the cigar" section for one third of one sample isn't probably even worth a full point for the final score—it is a place where some cigars will get all their points, some cigars will get none of their points, and things in between.

Compare that to the flavor section, while there are more points at stake and each level of difference is weighted a lot more, we just tend to have a much smaller range of likely outcomes. 

When crafting this formula, I tried to balance out a handful of things, including:

• Most cigar reviewers seem to end up with a range of scores that is basically 88-95. I wanted us to use other numbers, both higher and lower.
• Taste is most important.
• Taste is subjective. So while it's more important, there should be a bit softer/cushiony effects moving through that part of the scoresheet.
• Construction is much closer to being objective. I can count how many times I have to relight a cigar. I can—with much greater confidence—say "if you were smoking this cigar you would be able to tell this had a loose draw" than "if you were smoking it you would think the flavor is excellent."

As for why we value construction in the way that we do—which is something non-Cuban manufacturers have also questioned—it's because of two cigars are otherwise identical flavor/balance wise, but one cigar needs to be touched up three times, I think we should have a way of ranking the cigar that didn't need to be touched up over the one that did.

 

[charlieminato]

1 hour ago, Kevin48438 said:

Hi Charlie, thanks for joining!

That would be me.  I haven’t found a good apples to apples comparison chart for all of the companies.  What I’m going with is that those 3 companies reported about $480-$550 million in revenues, parsed from various and potentially unreliable sites. Scandinavian, Imperial, Altadis, General, the huge companies (in the $billions) don’t parcel out (that I’ve seen) handmade cigars from their other products so I didn’t mention them. Davidoff (this includes Camacho and other brands) and Fuente (includes some JC Newmans and other brands) are largely handmade cigars and do pretty well outside the US as well.  Especially in China which is becoming big and even bigger.  If you go to a non LCDH store in Dubai or Singapore, they will be seen. Again, this isn’t NSXCIGAR level research....

Without getting too far into this. STG and Altadis (formerly owned by Imperial) both have many other pieces other than the "branded" handmade cigar sales in the U.S. Branded would refer to General/Altadis in comparison to Cigars International/JR Cigar. Just in STG's case, the North American retail business did slightly more than the entire branded business (all markets outside of Europe) in top line revenue, though the branded business is more profitable.

The branded business for STG is worth about $415 million in annual revenue, but only 26 percent ($107 million) was handmade cigars. (HSA said $507 million in 2020.)

The NA retail was worth $437 million in revenue, but 81 percent ($354 million) was in handmade cigar sales.

STG did $1.28 billion in total revenue in 2020, but it has a massive machine made operation (that got bigger with the purchase of Agio.) One of my favorite random factoids of the cigar business is that at one point not too long ago Cafe Creme sales in France accounted for 4 percent of STG's total revenue.

https://www.st-group.com/annualreport2020/

[El Presidente]

appreciate the heads up Charlie 

[NSXCIGAR]

41 minutes ago, charlieminato said:

There are a number of other explanations, starting with that Cuban cigars could be worse.

I agree, that could certainly explain it! But as all reviews are subjective reviews, at least HW specifically finds CCs less likely to score well, and that's what I'm trying to get to the bottom of. We also have the fact that the highest-scorers have been CCs, albeit super-premiums or rare vintage.

As we both point out, the bias may be due to extraneous factors and further data has to be compared. Are the CCs being smoked before being acclimated, what are the storage conditions, etc. I'd certainly give HW the benefit of the doubt in terms of objectivity but the fact remains there is an imbalance in score performance between NCs and CCs. A deeper dive into the data would possibly even uncover a bias between NC countries like Nicaragua vs. DR. But NC vs CC is a very broad category analysis and I don't think you'd find much support (subjective opinions, of course) that NCs are in general more likely to be better cigars than CCs--at least not in the last 10 years. Being generous I would imagine them being equal in terms of overall consumer evaluation. I'm discounting overall sales since we know how that shakes out and I'm trying to be as generous to NCs as I can. 

My point is that while it's possible that the answer is just "CCs are worse" I personally don't think that's a plausible explanation. It is possible that they're worse to the HW reviewers, but that's the heart of this entire post. If that's true we need to take that into consideration. Why the bias is occurring is for HW to find out. Knowing there is one just means we as readers and consumers have to take that into consideration. 

[NSXCIGAR]

55 minutes ago, Cigar Surgeon said:

If you lump all scores, all time together to make some sort of analysis you're ignoring the impact that a particular years releases might have on scoring.

Playing Devil's advocate: What if 2017 happened to be a bad release year for CCs and HW's scoring reflected that trend?

My sample size of 10 years, regular production should be large enough to negate those kinds of anomalies. With a smaller sample size I would agree but HW's data sets are large enough to be able to smooth out those kinds of trends. NCs have bad runs, too. 

And again, I don't care about year-over-year trends. I'm looking at the history of all the HW reviews and the comparative performances of cigars over that time. I suppose the 10-year period is a 10-year "trend" but I'm selecting a period that is big enough to serve as an effective total history.

[Fumar Mata]

Thanks everyone for the thorough discussion.I learned a lot. I am not as seasoned as many of you here and with that comes some naivety but maybe on he flip side an outsiders fresh perspective. So I really appreciate HalfWheel.  I enjoy Charlie’s and the others writing style. I am procigar so I like to keep up on the news which they do a great job with and I have bought much cigar paraphernalia and NCs after their reviews. I appreciate Charlie’s response and detailed thoughts...So what I have garnered is that

my suspicions are probably true. Stats can be played with but NSXCIGAR presented

some interesting numbers to think about. There is some bias going on that can be speculated but all the confounding variables cannot be determined. Although for example I respect HWs integrity , one has to be careful about reviewing a product one obtains revenue from.I don’t believe anything is a conscience bias though but it’s still a flaw.I totally understand HWs need to compare apples to apples . Charlie’s point of when do you wait 1 month, 4 months , 2 years for a CC to be ready to review is accurate but we all know for the most part you do need to wait some period. Although I’ve smoked some 2020s ROTT most are better with age. Comparing a CC and NC at say 30days may not be apples to apples.

I also don’t love assigning points but if they are published we are going to look at them. I think some sites/publications think we all want them. I come from a wine background and lived through the misrepresentation that a point system produces vs just a tasting note....anyway I will continue to read HW for non Cuban insight and just listen to the FOH forum and my other CC avenues for my CC needs. Thanks all