Truth in 24 (Programming Notes)

Each and every year, halfwheel’s new year begins with a trio of traditions.

The first is this post itself, the second is something we call Holy Grail Week—more on that below—and the final part is a pair of requests, more on that at the end.

Jan. 1 is halfwheel’s anniversary. This website began in 2012, a cigar blog that was born by combining two existing cigar blogs—Smoking Stogie and TheCigarFeed—into one with a quirky name. halfwheel has been around long enough that looking back to those early days produces a different kind of nostalgia, a combination of pride but also, “woah, it’s really been a long time.”

This year has been an interesting one. More people visited this website than ever before, which I’m very grateful and excited about, but the last four months of the year haven’t had that same sort of stellar traffic. It’s also lacked the sort of energy, as much of our attention has been focused on the first three months of 2024, which is going to be an endurance sprint, an oxymoronic term used to describe my favorite sporting event: the 24 Hours of Le Mans. From Jan. 15 through March 25—roughly 70 days—the following will happen: Awards Week, Puro Sabor, TPE 2024, Procigar, Festival del Habano and PCA 2024. Unfortunately, it’s too much for us to handle, so there will be some adjustments made to how we do these things, though more on that at a later date.

Even with all of that, we added one more thing for Q1: Readers’ Choice Awards. You can vote on that award here. Sorry for the link snafu earlier.

On a personal level, this past year was the year that I’ve been most grateful to do this as a job. Not just write about cigars and the cigar industry, but to do it in the manner that halfwheel allows. We have been able to build something that functions well enough, that we are given the access, resources and the freedom to cover this industry how we’d like. That’s an incredible privilege, something I will never fully appreciate, but something I think about way more often and try to take for granted less. But that privilege happens every day and sometimes it’s easy to focus on the cons instead of the pros.

That privilege starts and ends with people like you, the people who read the site. So, on behalf of all us at halfwheel, I thank you for choosing to read halfwheel.

The End of Holy Grail Week

From Jan. 1-Jan. 7, we will have a slightly different week of reviews. While the vast majority of halfwheel reviews are of new cigars, the first week of the year has always been an outlier. This tradition dates back to the very first day(s) of halfwheel. Let’s find our holy grail cigars, the ones we’ve kept in a special place in the humidor until a special day, and just review them. It’s a tradition that we will continue this year, though I believe this will be the last time we do a Holy Grail Week to kick off the new year.

There are a lot of reasons behind this, some of them include:

1. Each Year, There Are Fewer and Fewer non-Cuban “Holy Grail” Cigars — We tend to try to review the new cigars that could be considered Holy Grail candidates. For example, the My Father Humidor Deluxe and OpusX 25—two of the more recent releases that I think could meet the bar, were reviewed like any other cigar throughout the year. Sure, we miss some, but that’s usually because we aren’t able to buy those cigars. What it means is that each year that passes, there are fewer super rare Davidoffs or Tatuajes that we have not reviewed, and that number is seemingly never going to do anything but decrease.
2. The Cuban Problems — Whether it be the exponential increase in prices of rare Cuban cigars or increased concerns about authenticity, trying to source the cigars is not what it was like five years ago. At this point, I’d be weary about buying loose rare Cuban cigars, regardless of the source, especially for review. On the flip side, trying to source the newest Gran Reserva or Colleción Habanos release has gotten a lot more difficult, even when you are willing to pay double the suggested price.
3. The Futility of Reviewing & Scoring Cigars Past Their Primes — While there are some cigars that taste surprisingly good after 20 years of aging, a lot of them are very clearly past their primes. Scoring these cigars can be a bit awkward and I’m not sure how much value we provide by telling you that a 25-year-old cigar that you’ll never see, let alone smoke, tastes like a very mild cigar.

If it happens next year, it will because we were able to put together a roster of incredible cigars to review, but I’m skeptical about it. To be clear, I’d prefer to keep doing it, but even if we suddenly had access to some of the cigars that we consider Holy Grails—the original CroMagnon 6 x 60, Tatuaje Thermonuclear, 1492, a fabled Dunhill—I still have trepidations about reviewing a cigar that was blended to be beyond strong nearly 15 years after it was made.

We could simply take the six most expensive cigars we are going to review in a given year and save them for a specific week, but I think it’s probably better to publish a review of the Fuente y Padrón Legends release shortly after it begins shipping—that way interested consumers can get some guidance about whether they want to buy the cigars—versus waiting six months for some arbitrary week of expensive reviews.

So with that said, we are ready to say goodbye to Holy Grail Week. Perhaps things will change, but if I were a betting man, I’d think there won’t be a Holy Grail Week in 2025.

Awards Week Schedule

For those wondering about our various Awards, here’s the schedule:

• Jan. 15, 2024 (Monday) — Numbers Review + Reader’s Choice Awards
• Jan. 16, 2024 (Tuesday) — Factory of the Year
• Jan. 17, 2024 (Wednesday) — Company of the Year
• Jan. 18, 2024 (Thursday) 12 p.m. CST — Packaging Awards
• Jan. 19, 2024 (Friday) 12 p.m. CST — Top 25 Cigars
• Jan. 22, 2024 (Monday) 12 p.m. CST — The Consensus 2023

Two Requests

Each year, I ask our readers to do two things.

First, go back and read halfwheel’s first post. It’s something I do throughout the year, though maybe not enough. It’s something I always do on Jan. 1. It’s a reminder of what we tried to create, our naivety at the time, and also a way to understand just how far we’ve come. I am happy that we’ve been able to not only survive this long but thrive while never having to veer from that ethos. It’s also a reminder that like any individual person, a nation or even humanity, we at halfwheel will always be a work in progress.

Second, do like we do. Go into your humidor and pull out a cigar you’ve been saving for a special time. There’s never a better day than today.