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Updated 2026-09-30

When 53% Score 90+: How the Best Cigar Rating Scale Guides Your Picks

Decorative cigar rating title card

When people ask about the best cigar rating scale, they almost always mean the 100-point system used by major publications. In practice, published scores cluster between roughly 85 and 100, so a cigar in the low 90s is already well above average, and anything under 85 rarely gets printed at all. The rest of this guide explains where those numbers come from and how to put them to use.

TL;DR:

  • Most published cigar scores in 2025 cluster between 85 and 100, with over 53% reaching 90 or higher, indicating an overall high rating trend.
  • Scores between 95 and 100 are extremely rare, with only about 10.2% reaching 93 points or above, placing such cigars among the top-tier selections.
  • The final score combines ratings on appearance, flavor, smoking characteristics, and overall impression, with the overall impression weighted most heavily.
  • Scores within a few points are roughly equivalent, so small differences between a 91 and 93 generally do not justify separate choices.
  • Retesting of high-scoring cigars and blind tasting processes help ensure reliability, but publication bias often results in a narrower, more positively skewed score distribution.

How the 100-point scale actually works

The 100-point system adds up scores from several categories into one final number, similar to how a school grades a research paper on separate criteria before totaling them. That structure sounds simple, but the real-world result is a narrow band of outcomes rather than a spread across the full 0 to 100 range.

Reviewers rate a cigar's construction, flavor, smoking performance, and overall impression, then sum those into the final score used in Cigar Aficionado's blind-tasting process. Publications rarely print a score below the mid-80s because a cigar that scores that poorly usually gets pulled from consideration before it reaches a reader. A perfect 100 stays mostly theoretical, a benchmark the scale allows for but almost never awards.

A significant share of rated cigars scored 90 or higher in 2025, according to Cigar Aficionado's 2025 analysis. That figure tells you the "average" published cigar already sits in territory many smokers would call excellent, which is exactly why the scale reads as compressed.

What do the score bands actually mean?

Once you know the scale is compressed, the bands become easier to read. Industry convention treats these ranges consistently across most major reviews, per Cigar Aficionado's tasting methodology:

A two-point gap between a 91 and a 93 rarely justifies picking one cigar over the other, since blind tasting still carries some subjectivity between individual palates and sessions. Treat scores within a few points of each other as roughly equivalent rather than a strict ranking.

*About 10.2% of rated cigars reached 93 points or higher in 2025, based on Cigar Aficionado's 2025 cigar analysis, which places that tier among the rarest scores a cigar can earn in a given year. Anything at or above that mark deserves attention, but so does a well-reviewed 90.

What do the score bands actually mean? — overview diagram

What reviewers actually judge in a cigar

Every published score breaks down into the same four components, and understanding them helps you read a review the way the panel intended rather than fixating on the final number alone.

  1. Appearance and construction: wrapper color, seam quality, firmness, and visible flaws in the roll.
  2. Flavor: the range and balance of taste notes, including how much flavor evolves across the three thirds of the smoke.
  3. Smoking characteristics: draw resistance and burn line, the mechanical performance that determines whether the cigar smokes the way it was rolled to.
  4. Overall impression: the panel's holistic judgment of the smoke, which Cigar Aficionado's methodology notes is traditionally weighted most heavily among the four.

A tight draw, an uneven burn, or a wrapper that unravels early can knock several points off an otherwise well-flavored cigar, since smoking characteristics affect how fully a taster can even judge the flavor. If you want to troubleshoot a cigar that keeps going out or burning unevenly, the fix often lives in storage humidity rather than the tobacco itself.

Pro Tip: Roll a cigar gently between your fingers before buying: soft spots or an uneven feel usually predict draw or burn problems a published score won't warn you about at the retail counter.

Fingers checking cigar firmness before purchase

How blind tasting and Top 25 retesting actually work

Blind tasting is the mechanism that makes a published score worth trusting in the first place. Panels remove the band and any pricing information before tasters see the cigar, which keeps brand reputation and cost from coloring the score, a practice Cigar Aficionado's process treats as central to the whole system.

Independent coverage of the Top 25 cigars of 2025 from halfwheel documents multi-smoker panels going through a hybrid process of several rounds before a final list is set. Retesting reduces individual bias, but editorial judgment still shapes which cigars get a second look and how a final list gets ordered.

How to turn published scores into your own rating practice

A published score is a shortlist tool, not a purchase order. Use a 90-plus rating to narrow a humidor's worth of options down to a handful worth trying, then let your own palate make the final call.

  1. Build a shortlist from published scores in the 90-plus range for the profile you're after.
  2. Buy one or two examples rather than a full box on a score alone.
  3. Log a personal score on a simple 1 to 5 scale, along with notes on time of day, pairing, and storage conditions.
  4. Compare your notes against the published review to see where your palate agrees or diverges.

Context matters more than most smokers expect: a cigar that impresses after dinner on a calm evening can taste flat during a rushed afternoon smoke in humid weather. Keeping a record over time, including flavor vocabulary that pins down what you're actually tasting, turns vague impressions into a pattern you can trust.

Pro Tip: After logging 20 to 30 cigars with consistent notes, your own ratings usually predict what you'll enjoy better than any single publication's score.

Where published scores fall short

Blind panels genuinely reduce bias, and the retesting built into lists like the Top 25 makes those rankings more reliable than a single reviewer's opinion. That rigor is real and worth respecting.

But publication bias shapes what you see: outlets rarely print scores below the mid-80s, so the visible scale looks narrower and more uniformly positive than cigar quality actually is. Editorial selection also decides which cigars even get reviewed. Keep your own notes alongside the published numbers rather than treating either as the final word.

— Yaro

Track your own ratings with Paradigm

Building a personal rating practice gets easier with a place to keep it. Paradigm is a browser-based cigar journal app that lets you scan a cigar — reading its band, wrapper, shape, and cap together — or search manually for cigars and log your own notes along with ratings from other users.

Paradigm Your Cigar Journey

If you want a straightforward way to see whether you'll like a cigar before you smoke it, start building your journal at Paradigm.

Sources

FAQ

What are the top 5 best cigars?

There is no single, universally agreed list, since rankings shift year to year and vary by publication. The most reliable approach is checking a current Top 25 list, like the one covered by halfwheel, and cross-referencing it against your own preferred flavor profile.

What is the 135 rule for cigars?

This isn't a recognized standard within professional cigar scoring or the 100-point system. Definitions circulating online vary widely, so treat any claim about a fixed rule with caution.

What is the holy grail of cigars?

There's no single cigar universally crowned as the ultimate prize, since taste and rarity both shift the conversation. A cigar scoring 95 or higher on the 100-point scale, in the classic or outstanding tier, is generally considered as close to that idea as the rating world gets.

Which website has the best cigar rating?

No single outlet holds an official monopoly on cigar ratings, and comparing across multiple publications gives a fuller picture than relying on one source. Aggregating rankings from several outlets, sometimes called a consensus approach as described by halfwheel, reduces the effect of any single publication's editorial bias.

How rare is a 90-plus cigar score?

It's less rare than it might sound but still meaningful: about 53.1% of rated cigars reached 90 or higher in 2025, per Cigar Aficionado's analysis.

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