Please help direct a newbie

Read Kuzi's thread and Martel's thread those will be good starters for you. Then change your name and goto the newbie intro thread so we can further discuss how to figure these things out. Till then. Welcome, get busy and let us know what to call you! Thanks for joining the forum.

just sent a post with some links, three from cigar dot com and one from cigarpass dot com on tasting and reviewing cigars  but the benevolent censor-bot scooped it up. Not helpful.... Anyway, if you go to those sites you'll find some guidelines

You can search up most everything in the Ratings & Reviews section of this very forum. Cigar.com used to have decent brief tasting notes on every offering ... not so much any more. You can google up such-and-so cigar review, but you get pretty mixed results. You can go down to your local cigar store and see if there's a knowledgeable cigar geek there. They like to talk sticks. Or you could buy one of everything in the store and ship them to me, and I'll let you know what they tasted like.

Search up Kuzi's primers in this section of the forum. 

This is a hard one to try to explain but here's a shot. Read a few reviews that weren't just copied and pasted! Find what those have in common and figure out if it's worth the investment. If you buy them get at least 3 I'd really say 5 just to be safe. Keep trying one every month and see what you still think. This is a very expensive indevore your taking on and it takes a lot of time and money to truly find what's to your liking and developing your pallet

You will hear a lot about cedar notes, coffee notes, spicy and on and on.
Being able to detect them takes some doing. 
Mostly just go after what you like, then try and determine what it is that you like about them.

You will probably find you gravitate towards certain wrappers or countries of origin.
I personally favor Cameroon wrappers. 

Here is a link to Kuzi's links that have some really good information.

Also, you might locate your "edit profile", the gear icon upper right hand and change your handle to something a little more to your liking. 

Stick around and there is a lot that you can learn about different cigars.

tabako said:

 Life is way too short to smoke bad cigars, so I plan on finding all the good ones. Enjoy the journey!

Curious.
How do you know they are bad until you try them?
I could never figure out that statement from people.
I've smoked a lot of good "bad" cigars and a lot of bad "good" cigars.

This is tough to express (guidance). It is like trying to explain why I feel certain music is good, or why I prefer a certain car/motor vehicle, or why a certain dessert or type of coffee appeals to me.

Best at I can offer are some helps to get you started in your own research. Lots of humans here on Ccom have posted reviews (folks have already mentioned Martel & Kuzi...go check out the reviews section for some great info from them), outside of the forum, The Katman, or Brian McGlynn seem to be good ones. 

If all else fails, do a YouTube search on the cigar that looks interesting to you and listen to the reviewers ideas on how they interpret that cigar. Cigar Aficionado is fun to look through, but they can tend to veer off course to the humans who like to buy $15k watches. 

It is intimidating, but also fun! This is a brave new world you have ahead of you. 

Keep a cigar notebook, write down details, your thoughts, how you feel, etc. 

Before you know it, you'll have some favorites and even a few that you didn't dig. Funny thing is people's tastes vary; if you end up with some sticks that didn't live up to the hype or aren't a fit for your palate, trade them, or gift them to another cigar fan. Someone loves that stick you thought was just OK.

Mostly, be patient with yourself, research a lot, and be willing to try new cigars.

Hope you stick around here on the forum!

-Jay

Wow. 
Thanks guys. 
Some very solid advice above. 
Just remember that learning about them is half the fun.