“Cigar Coop’s cigar of the year was too limited. I couldn’t find it anywhere.”
As a member of the cigar media, I feel it is important to cover the cigar industry as a whole. This includes covering the cigar media. Since I am a member of the media, I have a vested interest in my area of the industry. Around this time of the year, I put on my pundit cap and critique the various Cigar of the Year lists. At the same time, if it’s fair game for me to be a pundit, then I have to be able to take the criticism as well. My selection of the My Father Le Bijou 1922 100 Años Limited Edition Corona Extra has received a lot of feedback. This was a very limited cigar, and it’s now very hard to find on the shelves as many retailers have sold the stock they had.
Cigar of the Year: Objectives and Goals
Before I hold my ground and defend my position, it’s essential to understand that when it comes to Cigar of the Year lists, everyone has a different objective. If you are a retailer doing media, your interest is in selling cigars. If you run a cigar community, your interest is in what your community thinks. I can come up with others and different objectives, but I’ll focus on this for now.
As for myself, I take a journalistic point of view of the cigar industry. At the end of the year, I look closely at various things happening in the cigar industry. My goal is to reflect on the best-performing cigars I reviewed, and thus, I make a list. I’m not concerned about what cigar sold the best or was the most popular.
I’ve heard some people criticize our lists because they are subjective. Every time someone tries to use that as an attack, I say thank you. The Coop list is 100% subjective, and it must be 100% subjective. In the end, I would like to think there are a few people interested in what my view of the world is for the best-performing cigars. In other words, many of my readers are quite interested in my subjectivity.
Let’s Play a Game
But here is where I think the questions get interesting. Let’s take three different cigars – each rated at the top of a list for different reasons. I’m going to use real-life examples for this year. All three of these are excellent cigars.
- Cigar Coop’s My Father Le Bijou 1922 100 Años Limited Edition Corona Extra (Subjective Driven)
- The Cigar Authority’s Micallef Black Toro (Mostly Retailer Driven)
- Ash Quarterly’s Mi Querida PapaSaka (Crowd-source Driven)
Now remove the bands of each, and it’s time to play a little game. Based on these three cigars, I’d be curious to find out what each taster would say:
- What cigar performed the best in terms of flavor?
- What cigar sold the best?
- What cigar is the most popular?
I’m not going to attempt to predict the results here, but if you think about it, one of the three cigars above may be the same answer for all three. There may also be three different answers. In reality, there is no wrong answer. However, I sincerely hope (and am confident) the result for #1 would lean toward my pick.
How Limited is Limited?
For many years, I have considered eliminating limited-edition cigars from the Cigar of the Year Countdown. But it is too difficult to do that. There are blurred lines between regular production, limited edition, and limited production cigars.
I had an interesting discussion with Eric Guttormson of Cigar Dojo on this topic. Eric made a very good point to me when he said that many times, there are more limited edition cigars than small batch regular productions. As a result, there may be more limited-edition cigars on the shelves. It’s quite easy to look at lists and come up with dozens of examples that fall into that boat.
Final Thoughts
Could someone please point out the miscarriage of justice in looking back at the previous year of the cigar and determining the best cigar? I’d genuinely like to understand it. A Cigar of the Year list has different meanings, and one size should not fit all.
It’s important to know some pundits have questioned how many cigars have been smoked. The answer is quite a few. The decision to make My Father Le Bijou 1922 100 Años Limited Edition Corona Extra was based on multiple box purchases and plenty of smoking. I have a strong level of confidence in the list I produced. You may have quite different opinions about the best cigars of the year. If you are looking for the best-selling cigar past or present or the most popular cigar, the Coop list is not for you. This is why so many different lists are published – there are various ways to choose cigars of the year.
Yes, my number one cigar of the year’s availability was very limited, but it still was the best in terms of overall performance.
Photo Credit: Cigar Coop
P.S. We also encourage you to check out our Best Cigar Value List! This will show you what cigars on the Countdown will give you the best value for the buck. Like the Top 30 Countdown list, this is list I’m extremely proud of.
Coop, I’ll be honest, I come to your website to hear your thoughts.
Yes, you do press releases, and a lot of times it’s the same as HW, DP, CD or CA, but then again, sometimes you post them before any of the other sites, and that’s awesome. You do way more YouTube/Facebook content than anyone, and yes, you are known to have long episodes, but as I’ve stated many times while watching How Bout That Cigar, I wish more sites would too. I love to consume content and opinions as much as possible.
There are many cigar related channels/shows/websites I watch/follow(including your’s obviously) that I wish went longer because I want to hear more from the guests. But ultimately, I have my own views and thoughts, yet I think it’s important to hear other people’s too. It makes you think and it entertains the idea to process and make your own conclusions.
You smoked what you smoked, you liked what you liked. If people can’t figure out how to process that information and make their own educated opinions, then that’s on them. If they want to be told what to think or like, well then the list for them is released every year around the same time in early to mid December, just in time to go to your local humidor and try to buy them.
Otherwise, come here, to cigarcoop.com to get an industry veteran’s opinion and thoughts and take from it what you will. If however, you feel compelled enough to criticize them for what they thought, then maybe you don’t need to visit the site. Nothing is forcing you to willingly visit a website and read what the curator has to think.
As someone that also consumes a lot of cigar media, I fully agree. I don’t read or watch all that Coop produces but I enjoy coming to this website each day to get his take. Thanks, Coop. Keep up the excellent work.
I don’t really see the issue here. An LE is not on the list of criteria from keeping it ineligible . People need to read the criteria before they make comments .