Does Halfwheel ever have anything nice to say about CCs


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1 hour ago, Bijan said:

This is an interesting issue with broader issues of quality control. CCs are worse at the narrow aspect of QC in manufacturing processes. That is ensuring that they deliver acceptable quality cigars and weed out the rejects in any given batch. But from what you are saying NCs are worse at ensuring they deliver consistent quality over time, year over year. Both place a burden on the consumer. In the CC world to assume losses on dud cigars and dud boxes and in the NC world to track trends over time and quality of new and old releases.

This probably points to different needs in terms of reviews. With CCs personally I want to see many reviews of many different boxes and cigars over several years to get an idea of how good a good example of the cigar is and what is the variability. An old review is probably as relevant as a recent review, which given what you say is not at all true of NCs. Again this probably doesn't apply to the ELs and REs that halfwheel reviews, so I'm probably going off topic again. But I'm mainly into regular production.

I didn't expand out on my thought process very well, let me try again.

With CCs you have a particular size and brand of cigar. Let's take the Cohiba Robusto for example. Cohiba Robusto should be the same in 2013 as it is in 2021.

With NCs you will have a particular brand of cigar, and particular sizes. And those will remain consistent, presumably, year over year. But with NCs there is a constant drive to release new product. So when we talk about NC Cohiba, we're talking about a brand new product that was released this year, and a brand new product that was released last year, that live along side a brand new product that was created say back in 2013.

The challenge for some brands is that if you smoke Release A from 2013, it may not have anything at all in common with the flavor profile that has been created with Release B in 2020. I mean if you manage your brand properly you should have a consistent profile, or at least be in the same ballpark, but most of the time it isn't.

I smoke NCs for review multiple times a week, 52 weeks out of a year and it's not possible for me to keep up with the amount of new product that's being released out into the market.

 

54 minutes ago, Enduin said:

@Bijan I think you and Surgeon are talking about two different aspects of quality and that is pretty representative of the CC/NC debate. One thing is construction and one thing is flavor. CCs tend to fall short on construction, NCs tend to fall short on flavor. When Surgeon was talking earlier in the thread about NCs getting worse after 2018 I bet it was not about plugged cigars, but rather the flavor profile. Both things can be called "Quality" and they are two halves of the same thing: ideally we want both good construction and a good flavor profile. 

With NCs there are factors that are not present on the CC side of things. Something like a specific brand that after becoming successful, sells off to a conglomerate and the result being cigars that might still be well constructed but taste worse/bland/etc. Basically they become more like cookie-cutter commercial stuff instead of a unique brand. Camacho and Drew Estate come to mind. 

The change can also be about where the tobacco is sourced, because not being limited to just one country (like Cuba), NCs brands can source tobacco from wherever they want, which sometimes makes the cigars better, other times it makes them worse (but maybe cheaper to make). 

Then there is the whole re-imagining a certain brand, like some of the examples we discussed including the Cohiba M. Usually that works out for the best, but it's still a pretty big change. 

You are 100% dead on with all of your points. When I speak about 'quality' I'm talking about flavor performance, although there is definitely a noticeable impact of brand managers not being at the factory in the last 15 months and it has started to show with poor construction at times on the NC side of things.

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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 app

This thread has been quite enlightening, and I appreciate everyone's thoughts. Charlie has done a great job in detailing everything on his end, but here are a few things from my perspective for t

The luxury of HW is the sheer amount of reviews they do allows for a pretty good trend analysis.  Only 11 (regular production/LCDH/ER/EL/Anejados) CCs produced in the last 10 years have reached 9

4 hours ago, NSXCIGAR said:

Ugh, a whole new calculation. Not sure I have time to do that. Much fewer CC reviews so it was easier to total them. 

haha, sorry. I thought you had the scores all downloaded or something. 

I'd posit to say that if <5% of NCs score 90+ points, it would go some way to show that there are no biases towards NCs. In fact, a distribution graph of NC vs CC scores may be a better representation of where HW stands. 

It is rather unfair to cherry pick a few pockets of the statistics that support your hypothesis when the population is available. 

 

On the other hand, it was mentioned that they do not (understand) the reason for the FOH-commonly-accepted 90 day rule. Whereas, they rest on average 30-60 days. Another possible factor is that CCs are generally shipped globally while NCs are bought locally. Shorter shipping times generally reduces the amount of time required for acclimatising. (going down another rabbit hole here, I know).

Or it could simply be that new NC releases are better than new CC releases. I wouldn't know, I don't smoke any NCs. 

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4 hours ago, Hammer Smokin' said:

Great post. I don't even know what Veuve Cliquot means. 

That's probably a good thing :)

 

Brand of Champagne. I think it's pretty popular in Canada.

 

6 hours ago, Puros Y Vino said:

That 87 Point Siglo VI reference?  87 points on some of the Sig VI's Iv'e smoked would be generous. They've been 50/50 cigars for me. Meaning, they're either blow my mind or are just "good". 

Great post but just to comment on one point.

In this case unless there are several reviews over time like CA, or the review describes this distribution, it's not that useful to see an 87 point Sig VI. I guess it's up to the reader to read between the lines, but if I didn't know anything about a Siglo VI, I'd like to know they're equally likely to be either 95pts, or 80 pts or whatever it is.

I mean you can think of a review as how good is this one particular cigar that this one particular person smoked at this one particular time. That's how I do my reviews. But then one review by itself is not useful.

I feel like CA fudges things. They'll never have a 85pt review of a 95pt cigar (I'd have to check what their worst CC Cohiba rating is). Maybe not honest, but if I quickly want to see how they think a Siglo IV stacks up against a Siglo VI that system works out better in practice.

Best system for quick numerical scores for me is actually:

http://www.cigars-review.org/

it's just random internet people reviewing cigars, and they stopped adding new cigars at some point, but I find the scores are kind of useful, and the number of reviews for some discontinued cigars is nice to browse through.

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On 6/3/2021 at 5:37 AM, Cigar Surgeon said:

While CCs stay consistent (or try to) year over year, NCs change constantly.

Yikes...never been happier not to be playing in the NC sandbox.

Just a thought, but couldn't one argue that those extreme fluctuations in NCs could be considered QC issues? I see something like what you describe as a gigantic negative. 

3 hours ago, Bijan said:

I'd have to check what their worst CC Cohiba rating is

I had to look. The 01 Cohiba Piramides EL scored a monster 80 in the Oct 1, 2002 issue. Notes: Veiny and dark, this cigar has a firm draw. It has a soggy cardboard flavor smacking of mushrooms. 

Regular production: Cohiba Lanceros, 83 points, Cigar Insider, June 1 2000. Notes: This cigar has an irregular bunch. The draw is tight, and the smoke is sour, gassy and bitter. Unpleasant and disappointing.

Although I'm not exactly sure what they mean by "irregular bunch"...been around a long time and never heard that one. I guess they were coming up with new terms to denigrate CCs in those days.

And yes, it does say "gassy"...I'm really hoping they meant "grassy" because if not, that might be the most unpleasant flavor description of a cigar possible. :no:

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7 hours ago, NSXCIGAR said:

Yikes...never been happier not to be playing in the NC sandbox.

Just a thought, but couldn't one argue that those extreme fluctuations in NCs could be considered QC issues? I see something like what you describe as a gigantic negative. 

My original comment wasn't defined very well. In the Cuban world, you have a marca with various sizes and in general that marca will have a particular flavor profile that's pretty recognizable.

In the NC world you have a cigar brand, that cigar brand has any number of sub brands / lines, each one of which has any number of vitolas, each one of which may have a better, worse, or similar taste profile to the other vitola depending on a myriad of factors.

For some brands, take Espinosa for example, you could say: "Hey Surgeon I really don't like Espinosa, they're pepper bombs and that's not really my thing". That works in the CC world, but while the sentiment is true about Espinosa in the broadest sense, it can't apply across the board because you have lines like La Crema, Laranja, Themis (Cubariqueno Cigars but comes out of Espinosa, even more layers of complication...), Las 6 Provincias, and Especial that all fly in the face of 'pepper bomb'.

Now if you like the Espinosa La Crema Robusto, and you smoke one last year, this year, next year, like CCs the blend profile will probably remain quite consistent. 

On average, most NC companies come out with a new line every year, and many NC companies will come out with 'line extensions', which is a new size or a tweaked blend on an existing line.

I could write another two to three pages on this but suffice it to say; the approach to a line of cigars from a 'marca' is radically different from an CC to a NC perspective. 

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22 hours ago, Bijan said:

http://www.cigars-review.org/

it's just random internet people reviewing cigars, and they stopped adding new cigars at some point, but I find the scores are kind of useful, and the number of reviews for some discontinued cigars is nice to browse through.

I found this site years ago.  I really like the format of it. Sadly, it is underused/visited.

 

 

10 hours ago, Cigar Surgeon said:

I could write another two to three pages on this but suffice it to say; the approach to a line of cigars from a 'marca' is radically different from an CC to a NC perspective. 

There you have it folks.  Our resident @Cigar Surgeon sacrificing his life and palate to research the NC world by collecting first hand data and correlating it for those who smoke CC's exclusively.  May your lungs be plasticized and preserved for generations to come. :)

Good talking to you yesterday BTW.  🥂

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1 hour ago, Puros Y Vino said:

There you have it folks.  Our resident @Cigar Surgeon sacrificing his life and palate to research the NC world by collecting first hand data and correlating it for those who smoke CC's exclusively.  May your lungs be plasticized and preserved for generations to come. :)

Good talking to you yesterday BTW.  🥂

You too mang. We all need to get together in Cuba sooner rather than later it's been way too long.

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   So this is one great thread and is a good example of why I read this forum. Lots of great information about cigars. This thread affirms what I've seen of the results of blind tastings and all reviews here and elsewhere, people in different places smoking the same cigars can come away with wildly differing opinions of the cigar. 

This is an amended post I shared at the beginning of the thread.

Quote

I think they are fair but they review lots of special production Habanos. Gotta say, I concur with a lot of those reviews being a guy who gave up pursuing REs and Els years ago.

    I'll stand by it and say that 20 years + into a Havana cigar infatuation, you gotta find out what you like. Reading reviews and buying what's recommended is ok but I bought a lot of cigars I didn't care for. Once I had the means to buy, store, and acclimate my cigars, I had the chance to smoke, by myself, my cigars, and experience wha I like.

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4 minutes ago, Lrabold89 said:

very interesting and thanks for sharing!....ill take your word for it 😅 ...in any case, nice review !

Yeah, just don't Google images of it while eating 🤢

Thanks for the kind words!

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On 6/2/2021 at 2:36 PM, Çnote said:

Edit: to be clear, General Cohiba are not sold in Canada at all, so someone is going to really have to reach to get them and then post to FB or whatever.

Missed this the first time around, but CC Punch are also not available in Canada, nor obviously are Italian regionals put so so many Punch Mantua Italian ER pics among the CC pics in Canada groups.

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18 minutes ago, Lrabold89 said:

lmao ...this is absolutely absurd ....you read this and you just gotta laugh.........idc if its halfwheel, fullwheel, or whatever blog or person out there, this is pure garbage lol YET, it's someone elses experience/opinions/assessment....so considering eveything is subjective, i guess you gotta respect it lol...holy mackerel that is some funny stuff tho .........reminds me of a @99call   😅

One of many examples showing why HW’s assessments on Cuban cigars are throwaways. When it comes to Cuban tobacco, HW's facility for analysis is just not there. Not my cup of tea. 

 

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@BrooksW, sorry I didn't crack open my Primaveras last night as I said I might.  I think they just deserve to sit in their beautiful boxes for a couple years before I rudely smoke my way through all of them.  I probably won't make it too much longer though since the thought is in my head.  Instead though, I did open a new box of Escogidos yesterday thinking it might be a good compromise and wow did that prove to be a great idea.  What a shockingly good cigar.  The first few puffs tasted like a Rollo, milk chocolate and caramel pow! in the kisser.  Then a flavor ride with some transitions as it went along beautifully to the end.  These aren't going to last long, that's for sure.

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