Complexities of taste
Salem
Posts: 717
I've smoked 3 cigars so far. They really did taste similar to each other. I mainly tasted tobacco flavor. I know in some descriptions of cigars, that there are many more tastes to fine cigars, like leather, or cocoa, and a vast array of other tastes. I want that. I want to taste all the flavors. Is this acquired or am I taste bud deficient? 
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I've been smoking cigars for a few years, now, and I don't taste those things, either. I'm told one must develop their palate but I think mine must be developmentally disabled.
Give it time. It'll come to you. At least that's what they say.
Read Kuzi's piece on developing your palette
Those cigars may in fact have been alike??
It takes time, even if you do have a refined palette.
My palette is a bit rough (multiple broken noses, nose surgery, 40 years of cold water surfing, etc.) - I don't detect nearly all the flavors that some do, but I can detect coffee, leather, chocolate, "sweetness", sometimes a nutty flavor of sorts, and GOOD tobacco flavor.....there's plenty of tobacco that's not good, and I tell the difference.
As Kuzi will say.......keep practicing......
I have been able to pick up on things from orange peel (citrus kind of notes) to apple, pepper and such. The nose will pick up on spice, earth, leather, wood (cedar and oak are the most common for me). It helps if you've been exposed to the smells of wood and earth and leather to know what they are.
I also find that when a review refers to "sweet", they don't always mean sugar. Coffee notes are not sweet at all, but not bitter either.
You can let the smoke sit in your mouth for a bit, even push it around with your tongue and cheeks before blowing it out. This will also help cool the smoke when blowing some of it out your nose (start with only a little bit out the nose to get used to it if you can). Different foods eaten before a cigar may or may not help in detecting flavours (pardon my Canadian spelling). A rich steak will compliment a strong cigar while fish and whine may compliment lighter bodied sticks. In time you will get to know the difference. Just a few cigars is a starting point, and it will develop over time
I've eaten Norther Pike, Speckle trout, Walleye (We call it Pickerel up here), Lake trout and others when out camping and always have a cigar/day or more (out camping). That's the first time I hear of fish ruining the palate for a cigar.
For me, I'd have to say it's not true. For others, maybe so.
"Any cigar smoker is friend, because I know how he feels." Alfred de Musset
"A fine cigar is just like a woman. If you don't light it up just right and suck on it with a certain frequency, it will go out on you." Unknown
“A pipe is to the troubled soul what caresses of a mother are for her suffering child.” Indian Proverb
You might want to keep a journal - some cigars smokers do that - and jot down their impressions while smoking, or just after. I've never done that, but lots of guys do, and my guess is that those with the more perceptive palates have done it at one time or another.
i would like to stress one more time that keeping a journal is HUGE in palate development.
...and remember when you eat food, drink beverages, smell the air around you, to actively smell and taste them. always do your best to identify flavors and smells in your daily life.