Top 25 Sweepstakes Winner Takes Home Three Boxes
Who doesn’t love to win a prize—especially when the prize is a box of cigars from Cigar Aficionado’s Top 25 Cigars of the Year list? Or even better yet, three boxes from the Top 10. Our annual contest has ended and lucky winner Sean McCaffrey of Gastonia, North Carolina, received, not one but three boxes of high-scoring smokes from the Top 25 cigars of 2022: Alec Bradley Black Market Churchill (ranked No. 6), My Father Le Bijou 1922 Churchill (No. 7) and Romeo y Julieta Reserva Real Nicaragua Churchill (No. 9). Cigar Aficionado reached out to McCaffrey to see how he is enjoying his winnings.
“I’ve continued enjoying incredible cigars with my best friend Tom Parnelle over the last 20 years and the traditions, conversations and friendship we have developed as brothers of the leaf,” McCaffrey tells Cigar Aficionado. “That love of cigars and camaraderie continues today.”
He also says that he did not expect to win and had forgotten all about the contest until he was informed that he had won. McCaffrey has been sharing his winnings with friends.
A long-time cigar enthusiast, McCaffrey first began smoking cigars in college and reading Cigar Aficionado back in the early 1990s but said that his appreciation truly grew when he moved closer to Charlotte, North Carolina, and began frequenting the cigar lounges in the area.
Though a fan of Alec Bradley’s Magic Toast and MAXX lines, McCaffrey says he had never had the Black Market line prior to winning and found that it did not disappoint. Nor had he ever smoked a non-Cuban Romeo y Julieta before. After trying it, he says the Reserva Real Nicaragua Churchill “will be a great new addition” to his rotation.
My Father’s Le Bijou 1922, on the other hand, has been a regular inhabitant of his humidor over the years, especially in the Torpedo Box Pressed size, a former Cigar of the Year.
“Even after 20-plus years of serious cigar smoking, I never shy away from trying something new,” he says. “It’s fascinating to share a new blend with a friend and compare notes. You never know what you’ll find, and cigar smoking is a journey.”
