Each Friday, we reach into the mailbag and try to tackle a question asked by one of our readers.

This week reader Tom R. wants to know why a particular cigar didn’t make the halfwheel Top 25 this past year.

Since the “W” (Whore) by Pete Johnson was one of the highest rated cigars last year by halfwheel, why didn’t it make it on top list of cigars at the end of the year?

While we covered the process of making the top 25 in this post, I’ll be a bit more specific and concise here.

There were 38 cigars eligible for our top 25 last year. Eligibility meant the cigars were both new and scored 91 points or above. Three cigars never were shipped to stores and as such were not eligible and bumped to the 2016 list assuming they are released this year.

This meant 13 cigars didn’t make the Top 25, of which the Tatuaje W Nice Ash 2015 was one of the—it finished 33rd. While Brian Burt enjoyed the cigar enough to score it 92 points in his review, it didn’t score as well with the other three reviewers, particularly two of them.

Using our scoresheet we took the average score from the cigars used for the review and then had each of the other three reviewers score the cigars. We then added up the points and ranked the cigars.


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Charlie Minato

I am an editor and co-founder of halfwheel.com/Rueda Media, LLC. I previously co-founded and published TheCigarFeed, one of the two predecessors of halfwheel. I have written about the cigar industry for more than a decade, covering everything from product launches to regulation to M&A. In addition, I handle a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff here at halfwheel. I enjoy playing tennis, watching boxing, falling asleep to the Le Mans 24, wearing sweatshirts year-round and eating gyros. echte liebe.