Top 25 Cigars 2024
If you should know one thing before reading this list, it’s that we produce this list for halfwheel.
Our goal here is not to produce a collection of the most interesting cigars of 2024, the most popular cigars of 2024, or even really the best cigars of 2024. Rather, these are the 25 highest-scoring cigars that we reviewed in 2024. We go through lots of lengths to prioritize honesty and independence. The end result is a list that is unique. It’s the culmination of reviewing more than 180 cigars, the opinions of four people and, most importantly, the results of a lot of great work from cigar factories all around the world.
Eligibility
To be eligible for this list, cigars must meet the following qualifications:
- The blend must first ship to stores in either 2023 or 2024
- The cigar must get a regular review (redux reviews are not eligible) during 2024 or reviewed during Holy Grail Week 2025
Our Process
Determining the 25 cigars that make this list is based on a hybrid evaluation process that includes both one person smoking three cigars—offering some window into consistency—and three other people each smoking one cigar, giving additional viewpoints.
That starts with a review, typically published between Tuesday and Sunday. Throughout the year, of our three full-time reviewers—Brooks Whittington, Charlie Minato and Patrick Lagreid—is assigned cigars to smoke for review. Those reviews are produced by a single person smoking three of the same cigar. While the reviewer knows the cigar they are smoking, they do not know the score they are giving the cigar until the review is ready to be published. If that score is 91 points or higher and the cigar is new, then the cigar is considered eligible for this list.
The next step involves sending three other people—the two other reviewers as well as Brian Burt, a former halfwheel review writer—each one of those same cigars, meaning that six cigars in total were smoked for every cigar in consideration for the Top 25 list. Those three people score the cigars using the same system, one where they do not know the score of the cigar. (For more information about how we score cigars, click here.)
This list is the results of four people smoking a combined more than 600 cigars to try to determine halfwheel’s highest-rated new cigars of 2024. None of the four people on this panel knew what the rankings looked like until the final cigars were scored in early January.
We do not modify the rankings by removing cigars because of their price, availability, size, etc. There are no restrictions on a company having multiple cigars on this list, which is why some companies have multiple cigars on this list. Perhaps most relevant for this year’s list, we do not factor price into ratings.
