Emerging from a cloud of smoke, leading cigar magazine Cigar Aficionado has revealed its list of the 25 best cigars from 2020. At the top of the list is the Ernesto Perez-Carrillo’s Pledge Prequel, a stogie that slid under most people’s radars but easily won over the publication’s editors and judges.

The box-pressed cigar, released in September 2020, is wrapped in Connecticut Habano, a Cuban-seed varietal grown in, you guessed it, Connecticut. The filler is Nicaraguan, and as Cigar Aficionado describes in a press release, “is a delicious smoke that delivers flavor in bold, zesty parcels of spicy oak, licorice, black cherry and black pepper.”At $11 a pop, Pledge is the perfect in-between for celebrations and everyday smoking. Boxes are going fast, so get one before the hype wipes out the entire inventory.

This is the second time Perez-Carillo has won the publication’s Cigar of the Year award and the third time he’s made the top 25 list; Encore Majestic won the highest honor in 2018, and La Historia E-III was the second-best cigar in 2014.

To compose its list for the best cigars of the year, Cigar Aficionado sorts through its highest-rated cigars from the year and subjects them to further testing. That means a lot of puffing and blind taste-testing. For 2020, its editors write, “the Pledge Prequel stood out as the most sublimely rich, structured and interesting cigar we smoked all year.”

Check out the rest of Cigar Aficionado’s top cigars of 2020, and read it in print when the February issue hits newsstands on February 16.

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Tyler Chin is Gear Patrol’s Associate Staff Writer.

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