Developing a palate

[dafrey23]

I've been smoking cigars for a while now and am just now getting into CCs. I feel like I have a pretty good palate when it comes to wine and can usually pick out the different flavors. When it comes to cigars though I can usually pick up the prominent flavors on a cold draw, but after I light it up I just lose everything.

Any advice on the best way to develop my palate so I can start to enjoy some of the subtleties of the CCs?

[mk05]

Look at reviews of some people around the internet. If you go here [http://www.friendsof...hp?showforum=18] you will find many reviews. Look in your collection and pick a cigar you plan on smoking.* Go on the search function of that forum and look up past reviews. Take notes on what they taste, and then smoke it yourself. Compare. After a while, you will "develop" a palate - or rather be able to articulate what you are experiencing.

Eventually, you will be able to judge who has a "similar palate" to you, and buy/avoid things on their recommendation.

*Coming from NCs, you are probably used to cigars that are very wet. Try to control your relative humidity around 65 at 65F for your CCs, and you will find that the harshness tends to subside a little.

[Skyfall]

To taste the most read this:

http://www.friendsofhabanos.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=109562&hl=retrohale

[ramon_cojones]

smoke smoke smoke

[Ginseng]

After a while, you will "develop" a palate - or rather be able to articulate what you are experiencing.

Well put. The central point being the training and development of both awareness and vocabulary to describe the sensory aspects of that experience. The other key point is that the experience is your experience based on connections with flavors and aromas you have personally encountered. For active supertasters, this might be a rich glossary of many dozens of descriptors. For most folks, myself included, it may be 8 or 10 notes reliably detected.

Wilkey

[CanuckSARTech]

Agreed with what's said in these posts. Very much so.

In the past also, I used "flavour wheels" to help me mentally figure out and describe what I thought I was tasting. When I first got into cigars in 1998 or so, and then after a hiatus of about three years and back into them in 2005, I used these to help me get on the right track, so to speak. IIRC, the original ones I looked at were actually wine tasting flavour wheels, and I just had to mentally modify them to help me pick out the flavours. But some great cigar ones have come out since then as well. I've saved most of those that I've come across here on FOH, so credit goes to whomever made them and/or posted them. You may find these help tremendously well to let you get a handle on what your palate is tasting and experiencing. It won't happen right away - you have to build on it over many years.

Start with the base flavours and go from there....

This next one is the best one for cigars I've ever seen.

Extremely well organized and well described flavours and sub-flavours, etc....

And a special one that I believe Fuzz did a while back, special just for Ken....LOL...

And then a coffee one to compliment the cigar wheels...

[Fosgate]

Exhale through to nose a bit. You will notice when you taste beers wines etc that when you have the liquid in the mouth and then exhale you send those molecules up through the nose where sensory receptors much more sensitive will help decipher a flavor and make it more prominent. Trick with cigars is not to accidently inhale the smoke or cause yourself to go into a coughing fit. Try it a few times until you get the habit down. The other charts may help you pit into words what you taste. You want all your taste receptors to help find umami (ooo mommy!)

http://www.stogiefre...ar_Flavors.html

I had to learn all about tasting in brewing class that was explained by a micro biologist and had to develope tastung techniques and successfully test over them within two weeks. Yeah I know, Tasting beer for a college exam, go figure. Should be easy to pickup of you follow this and sit down with those charts and try to pick out the flavors and watch other online reviews of the cigar your smoking.

This is also where an alcoholic beverage also steps on as typically they are judged by body, aroma and taste. when you are able to take in a sip and let it run over your tongue to all the taste zones and then take in a puff of smoke and exhale both the characteristics of the drink and the smoke through your nose combined with what your mouth is telling you is where you wind up with a combined flavor of the two which is where you can pair cigars and alcohol according to what you like.

Again use all parts of the tongue for example in tasting stout beers you pickup the coffee and bitter flavors at the back of the tongue. It is natural when tasting that we keep the liquid near the center. If we do this with say a hefeweizen beer we miss out tasting the banana flavors produced by the yeast by not letting it run down the sides of the tongue. Once one does this then they find it easier to taste a clove like flavor and bubblegum flavor hidden in the mix rather than just a citrus and bitter tanin flavor picked up by the center of the tongue for a much better tatse.

Just as someone said. get out and smoke smoke smoke as well.

[MarkofStark]

This is all very informative, I too find it hard to decipher the more subtle flavors in a cigar so this is all very interesting.

[Ginseng]

Agreed with what's said in these posts. Very much so.

In the past also, I used "flavour wheels" ...

Well done, sir. Great informative and helpful post.

Thank you!

Wilkey

[Smallclub]

This next one is the best one for cigars I've ever seen.

Extremely well organized and well described flavours and sub-flavours, etc....

This one was first published (in french) by a friend of mine who ran an online cigar shop in Switzerland…

Anyway, it's mandatory you "nose exhale" the smoke as much as you can, and before that you should keep each puff in your mouth the longer as you can…

[CanuckSARTech]

This one was first published (in french) by a friend of mine who ran an online cigar shop in Switzerland…

Anyway, it's mandatory you "nose exhale" the smoke as much as you can, and before that you should keep each puff in your mouth the longer as you can…

Nothing should really be considered mandatory. Recommended, perhaps. I only nose exhale / retrohale about 5-10% of the time - apparently, I've been doing it all wrong for decades now.

[Ginseng]

Nothing should really be considered mandatory. Recommended, perhaps. I only nose exhale / retrohale about 5-10% of the time - apparently, I've been doing it all wrong for decades now.

I tend to agree. I do think that it is very useful to retrohale a few times during the smoking because it provides such a different experience. But I find the experience too intense (and too drying, nasally) to do more than 50% of the time, approximately.

I also dilute the smoke with air from my lungs to make it a little gentler sometimes.

Wilkey

[jangoman88]

I tried the retrohale yesterday for the first time, first few puffs had no problems and definitely picked up the different profiles. I stopped because I was talking with my wife and then went to go do it again and ended up eating/inhaling and couldnt get myself to stop doing that haha! At that point I just enjoyed the rest of the cigar

[kevfi]

Keep smoking!! Practice makes perfect. The important thing is whether you are enjoying each stick. The subtle differences in flavor will gradually begin to happen for you. Enjoy :-)