The problem with most cigar journals
They fill with adjectives and run out of facts. Two years later an entry reads "lovely, cocoa and cedar, would buy again" and cannot answer the only question that matters: why was that one better than the identical stick from the same box last month?
The fix is not more discipline. It is recording the handful of fields you will actually query later — where it came from, what it sat in, and how it behaved — so the journal can be cross-referenced rather than merely read.
What an entry captures
Five sub-ratings, plus an overall
Flavor, aroma, construction, draw and burn are scored separately, with an overall score you set yourself. Separating them is what makes the record useful: a cigar that scored well on flavor and badly on draw is a construction problem, not a blend you should stop buying.
Notes and flavor tags
Free text for what you actually thought, plus flavor tags from a curated lexicon — coffee, cedar, cocoa, pepper and the rest — so entries stay comparable. Tags are searchable in a way that prose is not.
Duration and a photo
How long it lasted, and an optional photo. Both are cheap to record and surprisingly informative later, especially across the same vitola.
Tied to the lot it came from
This is the part that makes the difference. An entry is attached to a specific purchase lot, not to a blend in the abstract — so it carries the purchase date, the price, the humidor it rested in and how long it had been there. That is what turns forty entries into an answer about aging rather than forty opinions.
What it is for
Two questions, mostly. Is this blend improving with time? — answerable only if entries are dated and tied to lots with known rest. And was that bad stick the cigar or the storage? — answerable only if the humidor's reading history sits alongside the entry.
Both are cross-references. Neither works from a notebook.
Start on paper if you prefer
There is a free printable journal template if you would rather begin with paper, and a longer guide to what is worth recording that applies whichever way you keep it.