During 2016 our team tested 350 cigars, the large part being from more renowned terroir, but without forgetting the countries that have a smaller output that are often times overshadowed by the quartet of Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras and the Dominican Republic. The cigars that were taken into consideration fall mostly into the premium segment or rather, the evaluation that follows takes almost exclusively long filler products into consideration.
The overall average of the tested cigars is only slightly over the last year one: 88.06 in 2015, 88.20 in 2016.
Subdividing the ratings by country of production, Nicaragua is at the top, with an average of 89.1 being the only country to surpass the 89 point wall. It is followed by the Dominican Republic, terroir that registered an average increase of 0.9 points compared to 2015. The newly launched products and lines have demonstrated the largest cigar producing country worldwide is in a positive trend. At the third spot we find Cuba, with an average decreased compared to 2015 (88.1 in 2016 versus 88.5 in 205); this is due to both the new releases, less performing then those of last year, and the 2016 regular production of 2016, which wasn’t always up to expectations. Honduras doesn’t present any noteworthy changes in the overall average, while the cigars we tried from “the rest of the World” have registered – 0.4% in the overall average.
Leaving 2016 behind, what will CigarsLover try to achieve in 2017?
- At the moment, the database of Cigarslover includes almost 700 review. During 2017, as usual, the number will increase further and parallel to that, the whole list of rewies will be translated and uploaded on to CigarsloverMagazine.com.
- During the year we have received many requests related to the pairing cigar – drink. In the month of May we launched a survey to understand what would be the pairings with the most interest and the result was dominated by the spirits, with 41% of preference (followed by coffee with 17%). This brought us to launch the pairings section, that will be expanded considerably during the year.
- The interest demonstrated towards the distillates has brought us to the decision to develop a parallel branch, that will be dedicated to this types of products: we will talk about spirits news and we will try and review a lot of them, with the goal to create a quickly growing database.