cigar aficionado top 25 2015

[Tman]

I agree. Some people seems to love it, but I thought the Flathead line was pretty meh. It gets people talking about the cigars. I guess that's what matters in the end.

[AndyCAYP]

It gets people talking about the cigars. I guess that's what matters in the end.

Ratings are a funny thing. The CA Top 25 definitely drives sales, at least at our store. We will be taking online orders for MONTHS from guys specifically mentioning that they're trying all of the top 10 or top 15 non-Cubans because "they have to be good, otherwise they wouldn't have made the cut." You've got a customer who normally smokes something lighter and short on power who will blind buy a box of Liga Privada No. 9 because "it has to be amazing, why else would it have made the top 10?" Likewise, a place like halfwheel can drive sales, too. I can usually tell what cigar got a rating of 91 or higher from hw the night before based just on the orders we've received overnight.

Back to CA: they would do the cigar industry a bigger favor by branching out and using their influence to help out some of the smaller brands... But, of course, smaller brands don't pay for advertising, so, yeah.

Back to reviews: Frustrating isn't quite the correct term, but it's the only thing that fits right now when my brain hasn't had its coffee yet. It's frustrating when we bring something new into the shop because we've tried enough samples to know that it's a phenomenal cigar, and we do our best to advertise it well while also mentioning something about how it's going to be a 90+ stick at halfwheel or it's exactly the type of stick that would make year-end top 10 lists, and customers completely ignore it for months. Then the rating hits and those same customers are scrambling to buy as many as they possibly could!