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LearnHow to Read a WSA Review
Every review on this site answers the question in its name... "Would I smoke it again?"... with the verdict stated in the first line and never buried.
The verdict comes first
A WSA review opens with the tier and one sentence of why. No hunting below 800 words of tasting notes, no 100-point theater. The site's tagline is "One question. Answered honestly."... and the format exists to keep that one question in front at all times.
One question, four answers
The question behind every verdict: would this site's own money buy this cigar again? The scale is the four ways that answer comes back:
- Box Buy (4/4)... a box stays on hand at all times. The regular rotation.
- Five-Pack (3/4)... worth buying again; a few belong in the humidor.
- Hand-Me-One (2/4)... not worth buying, not worth refusing.
- Not Even Free (1/4)... smoking nothing beats smoking this.
The whole scale gets used. Perdomo's Double Aged 12 Year line holds both ends of it on this site: the Maduro Epicure rated Box Buy (4/4) and the Sun Grown Epicure rated Not Even Free (1/4). Same factory, same aging program, opposite verdicts.
Verdicts are judged at street price
Street price is the typical online single-stick price at the time of the review, and the tier is judged against it... not against whatever was actually paid. A lucky discount never inflates a verdict, and a splurge never sinks one. When price nuance matters, it shows up as an exception note in the closing ("at the box price this jumps a tier")... the official tier still never moves.
Source badges
Every review wears a badge showing where the cigar came from... disclosure built into the format, visible before the first tasting note:
- My Money: bought at or near street price. The default, and as of launch, every cigar review on the site.
- My Money · Steal: bought at a deep discount, and flagged... a $5 cigar is easier to love than a $14 one, and readers deserve to know which one was smoked.
- Gift: handed over by someone. Judged at street price anyway.
- Sent by Brand: a company sent it. Coverage is never for sale... no preview approval, no promised score... and the cigar gets judged like every other.
The Setup block
Conditions change what a cigar seems to taste like, so every review states them up front in a fixed order: the cigar (vitola and dimensions, wrapper, binder, filler, factory when known), the street price, what was paid and where it came from, storage (vessel and RH... see humidity and RH), when and where it was smoked, the weather if it was outdoors, what was eaten beforehand, and whether it was the first cigar of the day and what it was paired with. Palate context is real... an empty stomach or a second cigar changes the read, and how to taste a cigar covers why.
The thirds
The tasting narrative runs in thirds... light-up and first third, second third, final third... because most cigars change as they burn. Flavor keywords are bolded in the text, so a skim still catches the arc.
The Construction block
After the flavor story, a fixed checklist covers the mechanics, and every term has its own Learn page: the wrapper's look (reading the wrapper), the draw, the burn with any touch-ups or relights counted (burn issues glossary), the ash, the smoke output, and the band when it did something worth mentioning.