Cigar Sense – Expert Advice on Cigar Selection

Cigar Sense is a new website that provides independent, personalized, expert advice on selecting cigars. When you create an account, you complete a survey that Cigar Sense uses to determine cigars you will love based your individual tastes. This site is pretty darn cool.

Additionally, Cigar Sense provides analysis of over 100 cigars and counting  about 400 cigar analyses that have been published for everyone to see, and thousands available to our members only.. Cigar Sense provides a graphical depiction of the aroma and flavor of each cigar, as well as written analysis on the cigar. Their goal is to provide descriptions that are detailed and provide a sensory experience you should have when you smoke a specific cigar. Some of their cigar analyses include beverage pairing suggestions so you can further enjoy your new cigar.

The site does NOT score cigars but you will receive a personal rank of cigars that match your personal tastes. The more than 100 attributes they analyze helps ensure you receive a list of great cigars.

Cigar Sense’s mission is to help consumers of premium cigars expand their horizons and derive more enjoyment from their smoking experiences.

Cigar Sense is the brainchild of Franca Comparetto, president of Cigar Sense Inc. Franca is certified in both the U.S. via the Tobacconist University and her home country of Italy. Franca is joined by her husband David Wells and together they launched Cigar Sense to help other cigar lovers easily identify those products that will “delight their senses”.

Cigar Sense has a subscription-based model with  and they have three levels of membership. The Free account provides public information but does not provide individual analysis. The Member level costs $9.00 per month and provides access to the entire site, including individual analysis. The Premium level costs $4.17 per month with an annual membership and provides the same access as the Member level.

Cigar Sense does not sell cigars or advertising.

I signed up for a membership and completed the survey to see what cigars Cigar Sense recommended for my tastes. Initially, I received 10 recommended cigars with Rocky Patel The Edge Maduro Robusto as the cigar that matched my tastes closely. The site provides what they term a Fit % that indicates how closely the cigar matches my taste. For Rocky Patel The Edge Maduro, Cigar Sense indicated the Fit % was 99%. I’ve smoked a few of this cigar and wouldn’t exactly pick it as my number one match. I then selected View All to see every cigar and the Fit %. I received around 100 results but honestly, I did not count them. I was too damn lazy so maybe there were 200 or 50 results. The bottom results were spot on. The bottom of the list had a bunch of cigars that I would never smoke, ever. OK, I smoked most of them once and will never smoke them again. Over the next few weeks, I plan to tailor my taste profile to see if I get better recommendations.

For each cigar, Cigar Sense provides in depth analysis and also provides an opportunity for the user to enter Tasting Notes. The Tasting Notes are detailed covering every aspect of the cigar. I suspect, they will use this data to better identify cigars I like and also aggregate the results to provide better results to all users.

Check it out when you get a chance.