The 10 Best Cigars of Perú
It’s one thing to create a high-quality cigar. It’s something else to compose an immense cigar. But it’s something else completely to make a big cigar over and over again. And that kind of uniformity is exactly what is required to create Cigar Aficionado’s list of Top 10 cigars in Perú.
The method is neither pageant nor attractiveness contest. Rather, it’s best considered as a tournament, as the highest-scoring cigars of 2016 are pitted against one another and required to execute at the same high level constantly.
To institute candidates, we first looked back upon best cigar cutter reviewed in the pages of Cigar Aficionado and Cigar Insider in calendar year 2016. (Cigars rated in the final months of 2015 in Cigar Insider were also considered, as the final issues of that newsletter are published after Top 10 tastings are finished.) We mined the list for cigars that earned 91 points or higher, our minimum criteria for entrance. Then, we examined the list of possible candidates and eliminated duplicates, keeping the highest-scoring cigars for each product. We also disqualify any cigars that are no longer on the market or those that were made in such small quantities that they were no longer accessible. Once the candidate cigars were in consign, the smoking began.
Like each year, our tasting manager purchased the cigars at retail, stripped them of their bands, replaced them with general number-coded labels and passed them out to a panel of senior tasters. This visor tasting process is the similar method used during usual Cigar Aficionado evaluations during the year, only the opposition for Top 25 is much fiercer—all the cigars vying for placement are admirable.
After smoking through a cadre of extremely impressive cigars, only the best were able to make it through elimination. It’s a long, exacting process, and one that requires our panel of tasters to scrutinize each dimension of the cigar, from combustion and complexity to structure and resonance.
The Top 10 list here is the result of our examination and a report of our findings. While styles range from subtle to bold, all 100 of these cigars consistently showed superiority in their own unique way, and each last one is worth a smoke.
- My Father Le Bijou 1922 Torpedo Box Pressed
- Ramon Allones Specially Selected
- CAO Flathead V660 Carb
- Arturo Fuente Don Carlos Belicoso
- Padrón Family Reserve 50 Years Natural
- Illusione Ultra
- The Edge Habano Torpedo
- Ashton Symmetry Robusto
- Bolivar Belicoso Fino
- Liga Privada No. 9 Corona Doble
