Herf Cigar of the Year for 2009

Here at The Cohiba Club, we do our COTY at little differently. Instead of arbitrarily picking what we think is the the best cigar from the vast number of available prospects, we make our selection from the cigars jointly enjoyed at our herfs, held during the past calendar year.

For this past year, that means we went back and looked at the results from Herfs 20 through 30. Yes, that's only eleven herfs for the last 12 months. We weren't able to hold one in July because too many members were out-of-town for the July Fourth holiday weekend.

The cigars considered for 2009 were as follows (with our ratings for each):

Casa Magna Gran Toro (88) – herf 20
Don Pepin Garcia Blue Label Lancero (83) – herf 21
Oliva Serie V Lancero a score (85) – herf 21
Hoyo de Monterrey Excalibur Legend Challenger (82) – herf 22
Vegas Cubanas Robusto (89) – herf 22
LG Diez 2008 Chisel Puro (88) – herf 23
Pinar Del Río Habano Sun-Grown Double-Corona (83) – herf 24
Cabaiguan Guapos Junior (90) – herf 25
Rocky Patel Decade Robusto (93) – herf 26
601 Maduro Toro (86) – herf 27
Don Carlos No. 3 (88) – herf 28
Ambos Mundos Habano Robusto (84) – herf 29
Padilla Signature 1932 Torpedo (89) – herf 30

That's 13 cigars for 11 herfs because, as you can see, two of the herfs (21 & 22) featured two cigars pitted against each other in a blind tasting format.

After much deliberation, the winning cigar chosen by the club's founders is...









This cigar won not just because of it's high rating of 93 (averaged from our group of tasters at herf #26, but also because on looking back upon what we thought of that Decade, it was plainly obvious to us that there simply weren't many deductions one could make of that cigar. Thus it was unanimous that our Cigar of the Year is the Rocky Patel Decade Robusto. A great cigar indeed, and if you haven't tried one yet, get crackin'.

Honorable Mention goes to:

Don Pepin Garcia Blue Label Lancero (herf 21)
Cabaiguan Guapos Junior (herf 25)
Padilla Signature 1932 Torpedo [1st Gen., by Pepin] (herf 30)

All great cigars, deserving of our praise. What a great year of cigars, 2009. One can only imagine the year of great cigars ahead.

2010, here we come! We can't wait to see what you've got in store for us...