My palate is a dumb-ass

[dondford]

I read all the tasting notes on cigars and read "hints of leather, dried fruit, hints of mocha, wood, etc etc". When I smoke a cigar, all my palate picks up is tastes bad, OK, tastes good. Every now and then a tastes great. The good news is that the tastes good are getting more frequent and the tastes bad less frequent. I hold the smoke in my mouth, swirl the smoke around and think of dried fruit, leather, mocha, etc but to no avail. Tastes good etc is about all my dumb-ass palate can discern. Are y'all going to kick me and my dumb-ass palate off this Forum or will I learn to pick up these tastes?

D

 

[Knucklehead]

Cigar flavor wheel:
(I can't taste that stuff either)

 

[DIY Pete]

Your palate is just like mine then. As long as it knows the difference between good and bad what else do you really need?

Pete

 

[Gdaddy]

Not to worry Don. If the cigar was enjoyable that's all that matters.

There are a fair amount of cigar smokers that are in the same boat as you. Frankly, I think a lot of the reviews with all the fancy descriptions show a good amount of imagination. However, general terms are recognizable. Things like woody, dry, spicy, earthy and barnyard are a few that are easily recognizable.

A 'smooth' cigar that tastes like good flavorful tobacco are the only terms I need to hear.

 

[webmost]

I read all the tasting notes on cigars and read "hints of leather, dried fruit, hints of mocha, wood, etc etc". When I smoke a cigar, all my palate picks up is tastes bad, OK, tastes good. Every now and then a tastes great. The good news is that the tastes good are getting more frequent and the tastes bad less frequent. I hold the smoke in my mouth, swirl the smoke around and think of dried fruit, leather, mocha, etc but to no avail. Tastes good etc is about all my dumb-ass palate can discern. Are y'all going to kick me and my dumb-ass palate off this Forum or will I learn to pick up these tastes?

D

I think it's real. I'm betting you could learn to distinguish. I'll bet, for instance, I could bring you a Perdomo Lot 23 and a bit of leather, and you could smell the one and smoke the other and recognize the similarity. I think anyone could sniff a Torano Cameroon 1916 and walk into a horse barn and recognize the odor right away without lighting anything. Or you could taste a White Orchid and I'll throw a slice of pumpernickel in the toaster, and you'll say, yeah, that's it.

It can be done.

 

[charlie G.]

I can tell you none of us would make it at a wine tasting event. Those people make up tastes that don't exist I think.
Like the rest of you, I love, like, or dislike a cigar. I have had a cigar that could be said to have a creamy texture to it's flavor.

 

[ArizonaDave]

Cigar flavor wheel:
(I can't taste that stuff either)

Not a bad wheel to haves on hand, but I use:

Woody

Earthy

Sweet

Tart

*Spice

(I forgot about Spice, but that's one of them.)

Then again, maybe I'm oversimplifying it. The "animal" section of the wheel is probably from fecal matter or urine? LOL, I'm washing ANY leaf that smells like animal!

 

[DGBAMA]

My taste is pretty simple too...

Dislike
Tolerate
Like
Enjoy
.

 

[HIM]

I agree some reviews are way over the top but theres a lot of flavors you can pick up from tobacco. It takes practice learning to identify flavors and different sensations on the tongue. For example I pick up cinnamon in Liga Privadas but its more of the same sort of bite cinnamon has on the tongue rather than the actual flavor itself. I believe its something most people can learn if they work at it. I think the winos call it "concentrated tasting" which is a term a I think fits. The more familiar you become with deciphering what your palate is experiencing the more nuances you'll start to notice. As was said though as long as you know what you like and don't like thats all that matters.

 

[Ben Brand]

I agree with dondford, I do taste something different in different cigars, but the earthy musky, orange or rhubarb and so on I miss. Maybe we are to comon to taste it!!!!

 

[LewZephyr]

I do taste some elements. Like I know when its peppery or leathery. I can often get hints of cinnamon or nutmeg from Sumatra when its burning. Not so much a taste but more of a room note.
Heck, my wife and kids says a Liga Undercrown leaves the garage smelling like Peanut Butter.
Alot of what I taste comes from the retrohale. As in I don't pick up those notes until after the retrohale, then I taste more on the next draw.

In the end... did I like it? That's what its all about.

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

The coffee wheel looks similar. I believe one can pick up a lot of those notes in tobacco too, but taken too far, I believe the holistic experience of smoking is destroyed by a need to discern the niceties of the smoke. Certainly that's the case with coffee. I know a number of speciality coffee people who do that stupid slurping thing, and can't just frigging sit down and have a cup of Joe. Even whisky. I have a friend who chews his Scotch and his tea. Gosh, it's annoying.

Sometimes, coffee will hit me with an obvious kick off something cool, like blueberry or lime, I had a whole bundle of 12 year old Guaranteed Jamaican toros that would hit me with apricot. I enjoy those experiences, but I don't obsess about finding them. It ruins it.

 

[dvick003]

You said a mouth full there ChinaVoodoo. I agree with you...

Gavin

 

[deluxestogie]

It's probably worth recognizing the difference between the experience of enjoying a cigar and the challenge of writing a review of a cigar.

"The Don Roberto was good--real good. I really liked it. It burned good, and was really nice. It tasted so good that I burned my finger tips. The aroma was good too, and the room note wasn't too bad. I'm sure you will like it as much as I did."

Some folks look for chocolate or butter or some other food descriptor applied to tobacco. Was that a prune aroma? Maybe grapey. Or maybe it was simple Japanese plum.

When the readers' expectations are for understandable identifications of commonly known aromas or tastes, drawn from the unfathomable spectrum of olfactory and gustatory sensations--well, you end up with a tool like the flavor chart. Have you tasted actual, raw wood? Every variety of tree offers a different tasting wood. How many varieties of wood are there?

If you want readers to be wowed by a tobacco review, you better use non-tobacco analogies to describe what you experienced. Do the analogies have to be correct? Probably not, but it's helpful if they are within the spacious ballpark of your experience.

Though written in prose, most excellent tobacco reviews lean heavily on poetic license.

Bob

 

[FmGrowit]

I smoked a cigar that made beer taste like grape juice...once. Does that count? I guess it would depend on what kind of beer it was. It was so long ago that I don't remember, but it was probably Budweiser, since that's the only beer I drink.

 

[Raodwarior]

Learning to taste the nuances in cigars is actually quite easy, however, also time consuming. Do a quick search for wine essence tasting kit, and find one that fits your budget and go. Its actually quite a fun journey and will give you an inside idea of how the blending process works.

 

[Chicken]

All this makes me very curious what my first grow of cigar leaf is going to taste like..i may have to send some of you samples of my leaf..

Because im not a regular.cigar smoker so i really dont know what would be considered good or bad.????

 

[Raodwarior]

All this makes me very curious what my first grow of cigar leaf is going to taste like..i may have to send some of you samples of my leaf..

Because im not a regular.cigar smoker so i really dont know what would be considered good or bad.????

Good or bad is in the eye of the beholder, smoke what you like and like what you smoke. I have had several big name brands I have reviewed over the years that I could pick certain flavors out of but the blending was so disjointed is was not enjoyable. So part is understanding the flavor profile you like, the next and most difficult is putting that together so they compliment each other and flow together.

That said I would be happy to help you with your tobacco tasting if you need that.

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

"The Don Roberto was good--real good. I really liked it. It burned good, and was really nice. It tasted so good that I burned my finger tips. The aroma was good too, and the room note wasn't too bad. I'm sure you will like it as much as I did."

I laughed my butt off.

Very well put, Bob.

 

[dondford]

" I'll bet, for instance, I could bring you a Perdomo Lot 23 and a bit of leather, and you could smell the one and smoke the other and recognize the similarity. "

I have the leather, please send the Perdomo.

D