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(jazzy music)- This is the Cigar Aficionado Podcast. I'm David Savona, joined here by Greg Mottola in the Cigar Aficionado Lounge. The Cigar Aficionado Lounge, which is where we do our blind tastings, which is the subject of today's podcast, tasting blind is how we do it at Cigar Aficionado.- A long time ago, I used to be the tasting coordinator, and that position meant that I was the, pretty much the engine for all blind tastings. I'm not the tasting coordinator anymore. Someone else does that. I'm on the panel. But what that coordinator does is he goes out, he buys the cigars at retail, most of the cigars at retail-- 95% of what we taste is bought at retail.- He removes the bands and then he replaces it with a band that looks like this. I'm not sure which camera to hold it up.- It's a generic file folder label you can buy at Staples. We buy lots of them.- When these cigars make it to a taster's desk, they don't know what they're smoking. They know the number. And that is really the core principle that has driven this cigar since day one. Blind tastings.- For those who aren't familiar with the blind tasting, what is it? We didn't invent it. It's happened before. What is a blind tasting exactly?- A blind tasting is when, in this case, when you smoke a cigar and you just don't know the identity of the cigar, you don't know the brand, you don't know the country of origin or the countries of origins where the tobacco comes from, you don't know the price, you don't know the availability, you don't know anything. All you know is how it looks. And this way, you really try to focus on the objective aspects of the cigar. And the reason this is so important is because, and I've said it before, for those that read the magazine, they may have read these words in print, but I think it always bears repeating. All information is prejudicial. And we try to remove that with the blind tasting. So if you know how much a cigar costs, that could really influence what you think about it.- Or if it's a brand that you know very well, a brand that's been around for decades, you might be inclined to give it a higher score than if it's a brand you'd never heard of before.- [Greg] Or a lower score.- Sure.- Because you could smoke it and let's just say you know it's a cigar that you like and you say, "Well, I typically like the cigar more." So it's not as good as it typically is, or it's better than it typically is, and that could affect the score. We aim to remove all that.- And that's how it's done at Cigar Aficionado and has been since our first issue in 1992, and we modeled our 100 point scale and our blind tasting method after Wine Spectator, which is also owned by M. Shanken Communications. And it's been around longer than Cigar Aficionado. Wine Spectator, they cloak bottles in brown paper bags. And we also are part of the same company that owns Whisky Advocate magazine where whiskeys are tasted blind, and those are whiskeys that are put into little bottles with codes on the bottles. So anything tasted by a M. Shanken Communications publication, whether it's wine, whiskey, or cigars, is tasted blind to remove all these prejudices you were talking about.- And one of the biggest ones is price. And the whiskey world and the wine world is faced with that as well, because there are some expensive whiskeys and there are some expensive wines. So you know the price of a cigar, that could prejudice you either way. If it's a super expensive cigar, you could think,"Well, like you said before, it's $100 cigar, it has to be good." Or you could go the other way and say, "Well, this is $100 cigar. No cigar is worth a hundred bucks." And you'll start nitpicking it unfairly. These aspects are completely removed from our tasting process.- The one thing we've changed over the years, the first couple of issues of Cigar Aficionado, it was a blind tasting process all the same. It was the way the ratings were presented. In the first few issues, the ratings were presented by country, so alphabetical order by country. So the Cuban cigars were put together from highest score to lowest, then Dominican followed by Honduras, then Nicaragua. Nicaragua wasn't a big player in 1992. There were a few Nicaraguan cigars sold in the US and then the occasional cigar made in the United States. And then after a couple of issues, Marvin and Gordon, Marvin Shanken, the founder and owner and chairman of the company, and Gordon Mott, the original top editor under Marvin, decided to, you know, we're rating these things all together. We don't know if it's Cuban, Honduran, Nicaraguan. We'll present 'em all together. It doesn't make sense to divide'em up by country anymore, divide 'em by, you know, highest score to lowest score. And that's the way it's been done ever since.- I think that's the smartest way to present it, only because it shows, it's a level playing field and the way we look at it, it's a level playing field. And we'll let the performances speak for themselves. I remember thumbing through some old magazines, we used to dedicate entire issues to one size.- That's right.- You'd have the Robusto issue, the Churchill issue, maybe the Figurado issue. And now I think it's a lot better the way we do it now because every issue has six categories.- Right. So the idea was if you're a Robusto smoker, under the old way, you might have to wait an entire year for Cigar Aficionado to cover Robustos again. But now Robusto are in every issue of the magazine. There's some sizes we rate in every issue, the more popular sizes. Robustos, Toros, also known as Corona Gordas. Figurados are in every issue.- Every issue and every issue of Churchill. And then we have something called the swing categories. That's usually two categories which will change throughout the issue. It could miscellaneous, it could be Grandes, which is that 60 ring gauge plus category.- Greg's favorite category. He loves the fat cigars.- Oh, please don't get me started.- That's another subject. Another subject, another podcast.- Coronas, Petit Coronas. Those are in swing categories. But the four main ones are usually the, I don't wanna say the most popular, but they are foundational sizes for the premium cigar industry.- I mentioned the Cubans and the non-Cubans being rated together. In the early days of Cigar Aficionado, even before I joined the company in 1995, the stories I heard was the Cuban cigar industry didn't want to be rated next to non-Cubans. They felt that their cigars were superior and didn't need to be judged against any other cigars. And a lot of the non-Cuban producers at the time were worried about going up against the legend of Cuba. And over the years, all these tastings we have done over the 32 plus years the magazine has been around, my God, 34 plus years the magazine has been around, we've shown that the non-Cuban cigars can certainly hold their own against Cuban cigars. And sometimes outscore the Cuban, sometimes the Cubans score best, sometimes the non-Cubans score best. And I think our blind tastings have really shown the cigar world that there's a level playing field among these different countries.- That's the beauty of these blind tastings. The cigars and the performances get to speak for themselves. But I really think you use, and I have no scientific data here, I think you use a different part of your brain when you're blind tasting. When you're smoking a cigar for enjoyment, you try to take the thinking cap off and you're just enjoying it and smoking it, appreciating it. When you're doing, or I know what I'm doing a blind tasting, it is 100 percent analysis. So first, we're thinking about how it's constructed, the quality of the wrapper, the quality of the rolling, the quality of the head, the draw, the burn, combustion, how even is the draw, combustion rate? All these things are quite objective. But then you start thinking about flavors. How many flavors are you detecting? How complex are they? How precise are they?- How well they work together.- And how well they harmonize. Some cigars are tasty, but there's only one or two notes. Some cigars are quite complex. And there could be five, six, up to 10 notes. You could have generic sweetness. You could have something more specific like caramel. And some cigars transition.- Good one.- The best one should definitely transition. There should be kind of a crescendo of sorts where-- Almost like reading a good book. You know, it builds and builds and then-- [Greg] Of course.- Yeah, it gets better.- And you want complex characters, a complex plot. And you know, a cigar is an artistic thing, a literary, I mean, you have these comparisons of literature, to music. I know I'm getting off topic here, but all these things you think about and you think about critically, you're thinking about how precise the flavors are, how well-defined they are, ultimately, how harmonious they are.- And you mentioned that there's a difference between smoking cigars like we do for the blind tastings, which we do here in this room, not at this table, but in this room. It's quite different from, like, having a cigar after work with a glass of scotch. When we're tasting blind, I've got a cup of coffee right here. I always have coffee near me'cause I drink a lot of coffee. But if I'm tasting a cigar blind, I don't sip any coffee while I'm tasting. I certainly don't eat, you know, I don't have any whiskey, of course, it's working hours. I don't even have any water. I'll have all that before I start my cigar. After I finish the cigar and give it the rating and know all the flavors, I'll drink coffee to get rid of the cigar taste, have water to get rid of the coffee taste. And after a little time letting my mouth kind of come back to normal, get a neutral palate, then I light up another cigar.- Yeah, you have to reset. Tasters have never, at Cigar Aficionado, paired the tasting cigar with anything. Not with whisky, not with coffee, not with, you know, it's just clean palate and the cigar.- I enjoy spicy food. I avoid spicy food when I'm tasting, you know, you don't start the day with a, you know, chorizo and eggs or, you know, a salsa picante. You know, if you're gonna smoke after lunch, you don't have a nice spicy meal'cause that could screw up your palate.- Even when I test after lunch, when I smoke these cigars, I give myself at least three hours. I mean, I really, really need the palate to reset because it's very important that the reader knows that our palates are in really top shape and in a neutralized position every time we smoke because we're dealing with people's livelihoods here and-- Very well put, yeah.- I certainly do not take that lightly. I want the analysis to be as fair as possible.- The ratings which appear in every issue of the magazine, which you could find on our website, they can move the cigar market. So it means a lot to the cigar makers. And of course, it means a lot to our readers who use the magazine as buying advice. So we like to say that, yeah, this helps demystify the humidor, use our magazine's ratings as a way to guide you throughout the humidor. And so we take that seriously.- It was our old executive editor, Gordon Mott, who said,"This is guide, not gospel", although it could be gospel as well.(David laughing)(jazzy music)- This episode of the"Cigar Aficionado" podcast, is sponsored by the Big Smoke Florida. Come join us for an unforgettable evening of cigars, find spirits and absolute luxury at the Eden Rock Hotel on Miami Beach. It takes place Friday, May 8th. You can get your tickets and more details at bigsmokeflorida.com. See you there.(calm music)(jazzy music) You know, I was a reader of Cigar Aficionado before I worked here.- Yeah, me too. Me too.- Okay. And I mean, the ratings helped me become a better cigar smoker. I remember going to my first cigar store when I was pretty young. I mean, let's call it 18. And I walked into a cigar shop. Now, I had smoked cigars before. Convenience store cigars. Muniemaker, Brevan 100s. And the occasional thing here or there, you know, maybe a Macanudo here or there, but I went to a cigar store, saw all these different choices, didn't want to ask for help. And I grabbed a cigar that, at the time, was way too strong for me. Kind of set me back. I didn't like it. And I went back to, you know, smoking the convenience store cigars. Then I see a copy of Cigar Aficionado. I wrote down all these scores. I'm like, okay, chocolate, that sounds kind of nice. Or coffee, that sounds good. And I used that as a way to kind of dip my toe in and walk through what, at the time,

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the cigar shop humidor.- The ratings are really a great place to start. Getting back to the blind tastings and kind of the different part of your mind you use, something that happens with pretty much every tasting is there are surprises.- Oh, absolutely.- There's cigars that you think you would've rated highly and then you find out what they are afterwards and maybe it didn't perform as well. On the other side, there are cigars that you think,"I would've never scored this that high." And then you ended up, you and the rest of the panel ended up scoring 92, 93 points. And that is something else that I'm not sure every reader knows that every score is not an individual score.- Oh, that's right. Good point.- It is an aggregate score of the entire panel. So if a cigar gets 94 or 95 points, that's not the opinion of just one taster. That is a unanimous high score across the whole panel.- Good point. I like to think we're a tough crowd of judges, so, you know, we put cigars through the ringer and, you know, try to point out the good from the bad. And at the end of every issue now, at the end of every tasting category, we have a thing called the buying guide. Just because we give a monster score to a cigar, that doesn't necessarily mean it's the right cigar for you. The highest score isn't always the best cigar. It might be to our tastes, but maybe, like, a milder cigar that might score a little bit lower or maybe the price is wrong. So in that buying guide, at the end of every tasting section of the magazine, you'll find not only the top scores, but the highest rated strong smokes, the highest rated milder smokes, and then medium bodied smokes, in addition to having, like, a section on best buy. So you might not find that, you know, if we give a 98 point score to a full-bodied cigar, you might be better served by a 92 point milder cigar.- Which is why every tasting, every single note has the body indicated mild to medium, medium, medium full. And if it's medium full, closer to full, that's indicated in the tasting note. Or if it's a little closer to mild, that kind of flirts with full bodied, it's also indicated in the tasting note. Our notes are concise, but I think they are very accurate and very all encompassing. Occasionally, I will hear a criticism of the blind tasting and the criticism is, well, you know, some cigars are so distinct. I hear someone say, "You know, anyone will know a Cuban, anyone would know a Padrón." And I say, "You are not as keen as you think you are", because these people have never been through a blind tasting. And I have a story.- Let's hear it.- There was a cigar shop, I conducted a blind tasting one time, and it was when I was still the tasting coordinator and the exercise was taste a cigar like a Cigar Aficionado editor. And I passed out the tasting sheets and I gave them all an un-banded cigar. Actually, it was a box pressed Belicoso. And it was about 30 people. And it was a very highly opinionated, cavalier bunch of people. People that said, "Oh, I would know this. I would know a La Flor. I would know a Padrón. I would know", okay, fine. We passed it out, we went through it. And now the object was just to score the cigar. It wasn't to identify it. Everybody wanted to identify it, and everyone was so sure they knew what the cigar was. And they all said, "This is a Padrón this is a Padrón. I know Padróns. I've been smoking them for X amount of years." And it was a Rocky Patel. Egg on all their faces, but now don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with a Rocky Patel cigar.- No, but they thought it was something else.- They thought they know and they were so sure of themselves. And this is just prove my point. You think you know until you start doing these blind ratings.- Well, it's good that you pointed that out because when I do a blind tasting, and, you know, we talk about this, when we bring on a new taster, not that we do that very often, the instruction is always you're rating the cigar, test the cigar, criticize it, look at the construction, look at the draw, look at the flavor. You're not trying to identify the cigar.- No.- The tasters are not, I try to put that out of my mind. I'm not trying to think,"Oh, is this a Fuente, a Padrón et cetera, et cetera?" How is it as a cigar? Forget what you think it might be. And I don't even use that part of my brain to try to identify the cigar. I'm just trying to rate the darn thing and hopefully enjoy the process. It's quite different than smoking in a relaxed state because you're criticizing, you're constantly watching or taking notes. It's not as enjoyable as sitting on my back porch and firing up a cigar.- No, absolutely not. And there are even days when my palate is off and when that happens, if I suspect my palate is off, I may light up something that is consistent that I know what it tastes like. And if that doesn't taste right, I'll recuse myself for the day. I may say, if I smoke two or three cigars, I may tell a tasting coordinator,"Listen, scratch those scores. I'm not tasting at my best today. Reband them and I'll smoke them tomorrow or the day after, something like that." Again, it has to go back to really fair, accurate assessment of everything, to the best of my palate's abilities. And I think, Dave, you and I have a pretty good facility for cigar analysis.- Yeah, you and I are pretty close on these ratings all the time, which is great. Almost all the time. And there's always multiple tasters on every cigar, and when the scores are far apart, if they are far apart, we get more tasters involved. And then sometimes you end up retasting and retasting to see what's going on.- It doesn't happen that often.- No.- For the majority of the scores, the panel is pretty close.- Every once in a while, you would hear people say,"Oh, they don't really blind taste those things." And I'm like, "Oh, please come to our smoking room, look at all the cigar butts and we'll show you the bills for", my God, I don't know how much we spend on cigars every issue, but it's a lot of money.- And you know, there's a myth out there that I, when it comes to our blind tasting, that I wanna address, another knock, you'll see it online sometimes, they say,"Well, they only smoke an inch or they only take a few puffs." And that is absolutely not true. Now what I will say is, if I'm smoking a cigar, and I think this is true of the whole panel, and it tastes like garbage in the first inch, that is it, it doesn't merit any further smoking. And the counter to that is,"Well, what if it ends up being great and it ends up turning into a wonderful cigar?" And I say, "That could turn into the best cigar in the world. It doesn't matter. Any cigar that makes you go through an inch or three quarters of an inch of bitter garbage is a flawed cigar."- I agree.- And it will be rated accordingly. Now, when you smoke a cigar and it's good and it's complex and it's building, then I keep going and keep going. And then I say,"Okay, let's see what this cigar has to tell me." And I usually go, when I smoke to the halfway point, a little more, but the halfway point really isn't the halfway point because you're not smoking to the very, very, very end. Really, the halfway point is more like three quarters of the entire cigar.- If you smoke to the very, very end, that's a damn good cigar.- And this method holds true. In the 20 plus years I've been with this magazine, maybe one or two times I've gone back and said, "This cigar that I'm smoking that is different from the score that it got." That it is, in my opinion, a very effective method.- Well, yeah, and also, you know, you're looking at cigar, you need to look at the cigars that score well not just one time, but score well consistently, because that's the real test here, right? Because you're blending solids, you're blending tobacco crops that change year to year and the real masters of the craft, the cigar companies that have been around a while, the cigar companies that get the highest scores over and over again from our magazine, they're the ones that really have this down to an art form and they're able to put out that great product again and again and again.- Oh, consistency is key. And that's where top 25 comes in. And maybe the top 25 is a subject of a different podcast, but that is a yearly award that definitely rewards consistency, certainly over novelty.- Yes. Absolutely Blind tastings, it's the bedrock of Cigar Aficionado magazine. It's how we rate all the cigars in the magazine, how we rate everything at M. Shanken Communications, whether it's wine, whisky, or cigars. That's the way we do it. We do it with the bands off. We don't know what we're smoking. It's to give the readers the best buying advice they could possibly have. Thanks for joining us on the Cigar Aficionado podcast. I'm David Savona.- And I'm Greg Mottola.- Be sure to go to cigaraficionado.com and YouTube for our future episodes and we'll see you in the cigar room. Blind tastings, that's a big subject.- Remember when I said...(jazzy music)