Submit a Top Cigar List for The Consensus 2017

It’s December which means a lot of things, but at halfwheel it means we are full into preparation for our awards which are given out in early January.

This will be the sixth year we publish The Consensus, a project where we take the annual top cigar lists published by cigar magazines, radio shows and blogs, put them into one gigantic spreadsheet and try to see what the collective cigar media says are the 25 best cigars of the year.

While I try to do my best, every year we get comments and emails asking about why a specific list wasn’t used. There are likely two answers: a. the list didn’t qualify for one of the reasons listed below, b. I didn’t see it.

So this year, I’m going to try to change the latter.

If you see a list published by a cigar media organization and it isn’t one of these 21 lists we used last year, feel free to leave a comment below or send us an email with the list.

However, lists must meet the following criteria:

1. It must be from a cigar media outlet — Magazine, blog, radio, YouTube. They are all given equal weight, but it must be from someone who rates cigars in a formal manner.
2. It cannot be from someone who works in the cigar industry — If the person writing the list or the person who runs the media outlet works in anyway, other than as media, in the cigar industry, the list is excluded for conflict of interests concerns.
3. The list must come from someone who reviewed at least 12 cigars in 2017 — This is a bit higher standard than normal, but if you are going to put out a top 10 list, it cannot be from someone who reviewed three cigars the entire year.
4. The list must come from someone who scores cigars in some manner — Numbers, letter grades, thumbs up/thumbs down, something about Chuck Norris. I don’t care. However, if the reviewer isn’t willing to put some sort of rating in a typical review, it’s hard to understand how someone could come up with a top cigars list in an orderly fashion.
5. The list must be published in its entitreity by Jan. 12, 2018 — This seems simple enough.

I really need help with YouTubers. I know there’s a community of people reviewing cigars on YouTube, many of whom don’t have websites. I consider them to be media outlets, but I’m just not familiar enough with the genre, so if you see your favorite YouTube cigar reviewer put out a list and they weren’t on this list please let me know.