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Awards

The Top 25 Cigars of 2022

At its core, this is best described as a 198-cigar tournament. Over the course of 2022, we published 198 reviews of cigars that were first released in 2021 or 2022. All of these reviews involved one person smoking three cigars. If the average score of those reviews resulted in a 91-point rating or higher, the cigars advanced to the next round.

2022 Awards: Packaging Top 10

Historically, this list relies on the human senses of sight and feel, but our 2022 list made us use another one of our senses.

2022 Awards: Company of the Year

Our four writers produced seven nominees for Company of the Year in 2022. It’s an incredibly diverse list of names from small companies to some of the biggest names in the cigar industry; companies that have multiple factories—one with factories in multiple continents—to companies without a factory; and companies with ages ranging from seven-years-old to one that is more than seven decades old.

2022 Awards: Factory of the Year

After skipping last year due to complications related to the COVID-19 pandemic, halfwheel’s Factory of the Year award is back.

2022 Awards: New Company of the Year

In previous years there was always a plethora of new cigar companies popping up, usually quite evident by looking at my to-do list for booth coverage at the PCA Convention and Trade Show. More recently, there has been a dearth of new companies, with 2022 being no exception.

The Consensus Top 25 Cigars 2021

Imagine you had a friend who never smoked a cigar, but had lots of time on his or her hands. And also had a really,…

The Top 25 Cigars 2021

Over the course of the last decade, halfwheel has produced many different Top 25 Cigars lists, though all have been centered around the same mission: trying to find…

2021 Awards: Packaging Top 10

The Packaging Awards is a tradition that pre-dates halfwheel itself. Brooks Whittington, co-founder of halfwheel, started the awards at his former blog, Smoking Stogie. We ask each of…

2021 Awards: Company of the Year

When it comes to picking the Company of the Year Award, there is both a singular question—which company had the best and/or most impressive year—and…

2021 Awards: New Company of the Year

For the first time in five years, we have decided to give out a New Company of the Year award. Beginning with the 2017 Awards, we…

A Note About Factory of the Year 2021

This week is halfwheel’s annual awards week, a series of awards given out by this site, capped off by our annual list of the Top 25…