Nearly every day of the year we review a cigar. The group of cigars we review over the course of any given year is diverse in just about every way: size, price, blend, stories. But we approach each cigar the same, and, with the exception of a few rules, all of the cigars we reviewed in 2018 had a chance to make it on to the list below.

Most of the cigars that made our top 25 are from 2018, though due to delays both in various cigar’s releases and our own scheduling, a few come from 2016 and 2017. Regardless, ever cigar on the list below is one that we enjoyed immensely. In order to qualify, each cigar had to be rated at least 91 points in its initial review. After that review was published, we acquired three more cigars for the other three reviewers on this site to smoke. Each reviewer smoked the cigar and then the scores were averaged.

In the end, 30 cigars were considered for this top 25 list. The difference between making the top 25 and missing it was .06 points, and perhaps even more notably, the difference between first and second was just .08 points, the closest finish we’ve had in the history of halfwheel‘s awards.

While Nicaragua dominated this year’s list, there was neither a single company nor factory that was able to place more than two cigars on our top 25.

Like with our daily reviews, the top 25 cigars were evaluated based off of a singular standard: how did they smoke. Price, release size, vitola type, packaging and just about every other attribute played no role into which cigars were chosen to be one of the 25 below.