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Taste

Sleddog46Sleddog46 Posts: 1,050 ✭✭✭✭✭
in General Discussion
Is it just me or does anyone else not get the flavors from cigars. I've smoked high end on down and every now and then I'll get a little flavor of fruit, but for the most part nothing.
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Comments

  • YaksterYakster Posts: 27,960 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Reviews are overrated, but retrohale for more flavor. I get some flavors, more on a good day. I smoke outside which doesn't help 
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  • VegasFrankVegasFrank Posts: 18,358 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited December 2019
    I don't get "flavors" per se, either.  I'll get some cocoa on the cold draw, and I also can pick up "earth" or must on the cold and lit draws. I can also get spices like black, white, and red peppers, and sometimes some cloves, but never cinnamon or other spices.

    I also am good at wood flavors like spicy cedar or oak.  I can sometimes pick up hay (mostly Cubans) and grass (candela).  I can generally taste creaminess and sweetness in the smoke, but can't distinguish or equate them to food flavors of any kind

    Speaking of tobacco flavors, I'm getting good at that. if there is PA broadleaf in any way, I can taste it, and differentiate it from CT.  Same with corojo and Criollo.  I can mostly tell Ecuadorian shade from CT shade and distinguish the taste of each.  I can pick out certain tobaccos as filler or binder also.  Not perfect but getting good at it.

    There is one kristoff with the orange band that tastes like buttered popcorn to me.  I don't know why though lol 
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  • PatrickbrickPatrickbrick Posts: 7,966 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Well there's your problem then.
    "We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give".  Winston Churchill.
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  • silvermousesilvermouse Posts: 21,108 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Just one of the things you young folk get to look forward to when you get old, sense of smell diminishes. 
  • ShawnOLShawnOL Posts: 9,695 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited December 2019
    I get the chocolate a little, smelling the wrapper before lighting.  While smoking I can get the wood and earth but mostly a deep rich  tobacco on a strong cigar.  I can detect other smells and flavors but usually can't place them.  I should really give up cigarettes but have very little will power.

    Trapped in the People's Communist Republic of Massachusetts.

  • jd50aejd50ae Posts: 7,900 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited December 2019
    I have only smoked 1(one) cigar that delivered all the flavors you would want. Creamy, smooth, vanilla and chocolate, sweet and full. No pepper, who wants pepper? Smoked it down to burning my finger. No out house or barnyard. It was a CUBAN R&J CORONA FROM CUBA.
    The best I hope for now is consistency and full smoke, no harshness or burn. Some sweetness and a usually (not always) unidentifiable pleasant flavor.
    Did find a hint of marshmallow once, but they have been discontinued.
    Now Drew Estates coffee flavored deliver and are good cigars to boot, pleasant consistent and smooth.
    There is one vendor that promotes the same or slightly different profile for every cigar they sell, and they get away with it. After 3 or 4 purchases I could not figure out what they were talking about.
    Of course, without letting them rest or age does not help.

    Don't have any problem at all with Backwoods flavors.
    Post edited by jd50ae on
  • peter4jcpeter4jc Posts: 16,691 ✭✭✭✭✭
    genareddog said:
    I was playing bill clinton one night and got a taste of, never mind. 
    Here's to hoping you put the cigar out first.



    This may be analogous; people ask me about the flavors of coffee I put on my labels and also how I can sort through samples to buy only the good stuff.  Early on, I had a cupping partner and we would slurp coffees together and bounce flavor impressions off each other - that helped us both to put words together w/ what our palates were experiencing.  The bigger piece of advice I give my customers is to actually pay attention to what they're drinking, to investigate the coffee.  Too often, we (myself included) just down the cup while doing something else, the mug is empty and we have no idea what it was we drank because we paid no attention to the coffee. 

    I'd wager it's often the same with our cigars.  If we'd engage with the cigar and let it speak to us, if we'd spend time investigating and experiencing the flavors on a consistent basis, over time we'd learn to put words to what our palates are experiencing.

    "A wisp of ocean sea-salt"...  meh...  In the end, it doesn't matter if you can put words to what you taste.
    "I could've had a Mi Querida!"   Nick Bardis
  • MorganGeoMorganGeo Posts: 2,230 ✭✭✭✭✭
    I agree with Peter.  Often times I'm watching TV or messing around on the phone while puffing on a cigar and just going through the motions of smoking.  Once I really concentrate and think about the smoke it seems to be a more enjoyable experience.
  • Trykflyr_1Trykflyr_1 Posts: 2,514 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Mine tend to lean toward jet fuel with overtones of engine oil and hydraulic fluid. I'll occaisionally get hints of solvent or MEK coupled with wheel bearing grease and brake dust.   

    Perhaps I should quit trying to clean my hands and just embrace the full flavors....
    I'm still troubled by what I did for that Klondike bar...
  • YaksterYakster Posts: 27,960 ✭✭✭✭✭
    I was able to experience notes of sarsaparilla from the Espinosa / Cigar Dogo Sarsaparilla cigar colab, but only on the retrohale.
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  • Bob_LukenBob_Luken Posts: 10,833 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Even if you don't retrohale any smoke, a smokeless retrohale process is useful. Immediately after the smoke is expelled, close off your lips and keep your jaws open and exhale remaining air from the lungs, letting that air circulate around your mouth and then out your nose. It's never harsh in the way retrohaling smoke can be. And I'm not saying it will help you put words to your tastes but it's an essential process to tasting all that you can from a cigar, food, bubblegum, whatever. It's usually a passive process that you never have to think about but if you do it purposefully it concentrates those flavors to your nose. It's called retronasal olfaction. Google it.   
  • dbeckomdbeckom Posts: 2,193 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Early on when I first started smoking cigars, I started a notebook for personal reviews to help me identify the flavors I was getting. In the past I had dabbled in wine tasting, so my palate was familiar with differentiating between some of the flavors but not all. I would take a puff, and while I let it linger in my mouth I would make mental notes as to what I tasted and what it may have reminded me of from my past. You may not always “taste” a particular flavor, but it may remind you of something that you experienced in the past. At this point I would slowly retrohale the smoke and again think about the flavors that I directly detected along with the memories that it brought up of something that I had eaten in the past. I took detailed notes on the experience and reviewed them the next time I smoked that particular cigar. As i smoked the cigar again and read over my notes, I could narrow down the flavors that I experienced. This trained my palate to identify some of the various flavors, notes, and nuances that tobaccos can offer. Now, after falling away for some time due to health issues, I’ve had to pretty much start over. I hope this helps someone. It may seem like a lot of work, but it can be a lot of fun and enhance your experience with cigars (and/or pipe tobacco) greatly. 


    "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
  • cigarshavencigarshaven Posts: 1 ✭
    This is what my girlfriend says a lot. Says she hardly ever gets very distinctive flavors from cigar to cigar
    "Eating and sleeping are the only activities that should be allowed to interrupt a man's enjoyment of his cigar." - Mark Twain
    Cigars Haven
  • ShawnOLShawnOL Posts: 9,695 ✭✭✭✭✭
    When I started, I kept a log of all cigars I smoked.  I made note of strength, wrapper, filler, binder and whatever notes the website claimed they gave off.  I found that there were wrappers I liked with some blends but not with others.  In the end it was interesting but a bit of a waste of time.  If I had Shiite for memory, the log wouldn't have been needed.  I would have been better off with Frank's system.  One bag for good bands, one for bad.

    Trapped in the People's Communist Republic of Massachusetts.

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