The invention relates to a cigarette essence quality detection method. According to the method, a colorimeter is adopted to detect values L, a and b of a cigarette essence standard substance and values L, a and b of a to-be-detected sample; the values L, a and b of the to-be-detected sample are compared with the values L, a and b of the standard substance, and delta(L), delta(a), delta(b) and delta(E) are obtained; a near-infrared spectrometer is adopted to collect a spectrum of the cigarette essence standard substance and a spectrum of the to-be-detected sample, and the collected spectra arepretreated to eliminate noise and correct baselines; in combination with a Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization method, the cigarette essence standard substance is selected to serve as a standard, and the similarity between the cigarette essence to-be-detected sample and the standard substance is calculated; and when the cigarette essence to-be-detected sample meets the relations that the delta(E) is smaller than or equal to 1.0, the similarity n is greater than or equal to 90%, and absolute values of the delta(L), the delta(a) and the delta(b) are all smaller than or equal to 0.5, the detected cigarette essence to-be-detected sample is qualified. The method is objective, easy and convenient to implement, accurate in calculation result, fast in detection process and easy to apply and popularize.