Miscellaneous

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.

After publishing 198 reviews of new cigars in 2022, we are finally ready to talk about the 25 highest-scoring cigars. It’s time for halfwheel’s Top 25 Live Show.

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

Brooks, Patrick and I will unveil the Packaging Top 10 for 2022. And you can watch and listen live.

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.

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

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.

It’s definitely not the post you are hoping for, but it does provide lots of context for the awards to come.

Hint: The answer to 21 Down is “OMETEPE.”

Tune in at 10:00 P.M. to see Will Cooper and me talk cigars and hopefully something other than cigars.

Also, the Revierderby.