#1 Cigar of 2020 Fonseca by My Father
Congratulations to My Father Cigars for claiming our #1 Cigar of 2020 with Fonseca by My Father. Our team was impressed by the fresh new interpretation that the My Father team has given the Fonseca brand. An all-Nicaraguan blend featuring a shade-grown Corojo ’99 wrapper, this flavorful robusto delivered a medium-bodied experience full of sweet spices, tea, floral, milk chocolate and maraschino cherries.
With high marks for construction, smoke production, complexity, and balance, Fonseca by My Father is a blend worthy of the Fonseca name and the #1 spot on our list.
Strength: ■■■□□
Rating: 93
Read the full review here
Top Cigars of 2020: 2 - 10
Weighing in at 4.5″ x 52, Cohiba Royale Gran Royale delivers loads of flavor and proves this brand can still hang with the best in the world. Dynamic notes of rich tobacco, earth, cherries, spice and a creamy finish gives this cigar charisma and complexity.
Strength: ■■■■□
Rating: 93
Read the full review here
Artesano Del Tobacco captures our #3 cigar of the year for the second year in a row with Viva La Vida Club 500, a 6×60 blend created to commemorate the first 500 stores to carry the brand. This blend delivers rich, ever-changing balances of chocolate, roasted nuts, red pepper, and cinnamon.
Strength: ■■■■□
Rating: 93
Read the full review here
Another 6×60 makes the Top 10 in the form of the Davidoff Year of the Ox. We generally aren’t fans of this large a ring gauge, but the harmonious combination of almonds, toasted bread, and burnt crème brûlée prevailed.
Strength: ■■■□□
Rating: 92
Read the full review here
The Charter Oak Habano from Foundation Cigar Company nabs our #5 spot for its refined strength. The Ecuadorian Habano wrapper delivers a sweet character, with almonds, mocha, cinnamon and nuts, and at just over $6 per cigar, the Charter Oak Habano delivers an impossible price to value ratio.
Strength: ■■■■□
Rating: 92
Read the full review here
Micallef makes our Top 10 for the second year in a row, this time for the newest size of the Herencia Habano. Like so many Micallef cigars, this blend delivers big on flavor, with transitions from floral to graham cracker, nuts and chocolate that stay in near perfect balance.
Strength: ■■■□□
Rating: 91
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AVO’s Improvisation Series delivered again in 2020 with a mild, sophisticated blend. In the way that perhaps only AVO cigars can, the AVO Improvisation Series LE 2020 delivers highly aromatic combinations of wood, leather, mushroom and mustiness.
Strength: ■■□□□
Rating: 91
Read the full review here
Davidoff makes another appearance on our Top 10 with its reintroduced Robusto Intenso blend. Note to the consumer: this is Davidoff intense, not the Nicaraguan pepper-bomb intense you may expect from other brands. Expecting intense but refined notes of graham cracker, raisins, cedar, and mushroom.
Strength: ■■■■□
Rating: 90
Read the full review here
Our #9 slot goes to another limited edition blend, the Liga Privada Year of the Rat from Drew Estate. Its thinner 46 ring gauge concentrates flavors of black pepper, wood, and vanilla that are wonderfully complemented by a long, creamy finish.
Strength: ■■■■□
Rating: 90
Read the full review here
With the Cameroon Lonsdale, JRE Tobacco proves that Honduran blends can deliver world class complexity and balance. We loved the varieties of nuts we experienced throughout this smoke, with cashew morphing to peanuts and then to almond towards the end.
Strength: ■■■□□
Rating: 90
Read the full review here
For more information on our ratings, check out our scoring system.
Want to be considered for our 2021 ratings? Contact us here.
January 6, 2021 @ 1:09 pm
This review is based upon ? What about people who do not like strong or mixed flavors. Or like mild
January 6, 2021 @ 1:22 pm
Hi Richard,
In our reviews, we score based on construction, complexity/harmony of flavors, and overall enjoyability of the cigar. You can read more about our scoring philosophy here: https://finetobacconyc.com/scoring-system/.
For people who like mild cigars with just a few flavors, there are plenty of options. But mild cigars with few flavors generally don’t score well on complexity and thus don’t make it into the top scores.