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The Case Against the 100-Point Scale

Updated 2026-09-03 · by Eric

I used the 100-point scale when I started. It kept telling me two cigars were close when one was phenomenal and the other was one I'd never light again. So I threw it out and kept the only four questions I actually ask myself.

What the scorecard did to me

When I started smoking cigars I ran the usual categories: appearance, draw, burn, aroma, taste, flavor profile. Score each one, rank them, add it up. It looked rigorous. Here's what it produced.

A cigar that looked really good, drew flawlessly, burned flawlessly... and tasted like crap. On paper it landed around a 78. Not that bad. In reality it was a cigar I would never smoke again.

Then a cigar that tasted phenomenal, but I had to touch it up a few times, it didn't look great, and the draw was decent but not perfect. An 87 or 88. Line those two up by the numbers and they look pretty close. They are not remotely close. One goes in the humidor and one never gets bought again. A scale that can't tell those two apart isn't measuring the thing I care about.

Aroma was always a weird one to score, too. I don't smell much of it while I'm smoking my own cigar. For me it's flavor.

The order that actually matters

It goes like this. Do I like the flavor? Then, what's the draw like... is it enjoyable to smoke, or does it make me work for it? Then the burn. Does it burn well, or do I have to touch it up all the time and think about the cigar constantly to make sure it's going to give me the flavor I want?

Appearance doesn't come into it at all. The cigar I was smoking while I worked this out, the Padrón Family Reserve No. 45 Maduro, doesn't look that great as a cigar. I've had $10 cigars that look substantially better, cleaner wrapper, the whole thing. Do I care? No. Once it's in my hand, cut and lit, I'm not looking at it thinking "that's a really pretty wrapper" or "that wrapper looks like crap." It doesn't factor in. Maybe it does when I'm picking a new cigar off a shelf. After the first time I've smoked it, all I care about is that the wrapper holds itself together and the cigar functions properly.

Four questions instead of a hundred points

After I gave up on 100 points I played with 1-to-10, then 1-to-5, and then boiled it down to the questions I was already asking about every cigar anyway:

• Is it good enough that I need a box of these in the humidor?
• Is it good enough to go buy a five-pack? If I'm going to buy one, I'm willing to buy five after I've tried it once.
• Would I smoke it if someone handed it to me, but I wouldn't buy it myself?
• Or am I just never smoking that again?

Those are the four tiers on every review here. How to read a review spells out the rest.

Why the bottom tier is real

I don't smoke that many cigars. Hardly ever more than one in a day. When I do smoke, the whole point is to relax, either with the cigar by itself or with a friend or a group of friends while everyone just hangs out. I'm not going to spend that on a crappy cigar. A 78 doesn't tell you that. "Never again" does.

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