Hints on training your palette

[Shelby07]

I know a lot of you don't like the "phoo-phoo" type posts related to describing certain flavors in cigars, but there is a useful purpose for such recognition. It is a good thing to be able to identify and recognize such flavors as leather, cedar, fruit, etc if for nothing more than to be able to read a review of a cigar and decide if the flavors being described are actually flavors that you like. For example, if someone tells me that there is a fantastic cigar that I should try with a grassy flavor, I know right away that I probably won't enjoy it. And with the multitude of cigars available, being able to actually understand what others are saying about a certain stick can save a lot of money while it increases the chances of having a good experience.

With that said, I'd like to start a discussion about hints for recognizing certain "flavors" in a cigar. A lot of this comes from wine tasting tips, which are very similar.

First, most flavors are actually the result of our sense of smell. There are only 5 "flavors" that we can actually pick up with our taste buds, the rest are actually the result of the odors that our olfactory senses (smell) pick up. What we taste is largely determined by the gasses and odors that certain substances put out.

In cigar smoking, lots of the tastes that we describe are things that we never eat. Leather, wood, charcoal, etc. So how do we learn to recognize these flavors? There is a routine that I used to use years ago when I started getting interested in wine. I would get several items... cedar chips, different fruits, flowers and, yes, even leather and put each item in a wine glass (separately.) For certain items such as walnuts or other large items it was helpful to grind them up. Then I would sniff the various glasses and try to pick up the residual "taste" that it left. It might sound like a bunch of "phoo-phoo" but if you are serious about wine or cigars it is well worth the effort. The result is that after a short time you will be able to start to recognize certain intangible "flavors" in your cigars and, more importantly, be able to describe the cigar in a much more understandable way than just "mmmm....."

You don't have to line up 20 glasses at a time. In fact, just try one or two items at a time over a period of weeks or months as you think of different possibilities and revisit them occasionally. Try things that you never thought of trying, like rubber or toast. Pretty soon you will be able to pick out and describe several tastes in your sticks and, more importantly, have a pretty good idea of which premium stick you are going to drop the next 20 bucks on for that special smoke.

OK - here it is... I have resisted starting this thread on this site for a while for obvious reasons. Go ahead and have fun with it (can't wait to read K7's comments, ) but I think a thread like this would be great for newbies curious about developing their sense of "taste."

BTW - Don't open up the pepper shaker or the ammonia bottle and start sniffing.