Developing your palate.

[teewinot]

One of the new guys here.  Did my intro a few weeks ago.

How did you all develop your palate?  Did it just come naturally over time?  I know when I like a cigar but can't seem to pick up the wonderful nuances so many can describe.  I'd be hard pressed to pick out individual flavors.  I read reviews and look at all the different flavors people pick up and am jealous.

Is there a system any of you used to train your palate?  Any advice?

Thank you!

 

[FreedomMN]

What I found most helpful for me was when I’m tasting a new stick to not pair it with anything but water. Also very helpful to smoke with someone who has a developed palate and describe back and forth the taste you are getting you will be amazed what you are tasting and can’t put a descriptor to it. 

[fitzy]

I find watching video reviews of the stick I'm smoking helps me recognize the flavors. 

[Fugu]

24 minutes ago, teewinot said:

How did you all develop your palate?  Did it just come naturally over time?  I know when I like a cigar but can't seem to pick up the wonderful nuances so many can describe.  I'd be hard pressed to pick out individual flavors.  I read reviews and look at all the different flavors people pick up and am jealous.

Mate, don't bother. And don't try too hard. It will come to you. And - mind you - when BOTLs describe flavours and aromas it is quite often just a hint, a nuance as you correctly say, a reminescence rather than (always) the full sensory 'flash'. In certain cigars, I am still at times hard beaten to differentiate or put a name to a certain flavour aspect. Often those smokes happen to be the best and most complex ones.

There is a lot of personal experience but also interpretation involved. And there are experienced members on this board who insist that what they taste is - tobacco.

Cheers, and enjoy the journey!

[Kitchen]

Practice and concentration is how I developed my palate. 

I pretty much grow up cooking and started working in restaurants at 14.  (If it was not for the lifestyle, I would have went to culinary school.)  I was always taught to learn to differentiate spices and herbs by smell.  Constantly taste food as I made it just to taste how much of a specific flavor was added.  Analyze a dish and try to figure out the ingredients.  After a while, you just got into the habit of always doing it.  It becomes hard to turn it off, especially if you really like the overall flavor combination. 

The best way to train your palate is pick a cigar, or food or wine, where you already know the flavor profile and get those flavors as well.  Then, as you're enjoying that cigar (or wine or food), taste/smell that specific flavor, like coffee or chocolate or paprika, just enough to remind you of what it taste like.  Then, on the next puff or sip, concentrate on picking up on just that flavor.  Regardless if it is strong or subtle, you should be able to pick up on it. 

Also, remember we taste "left to right," or from strongest to weakest.

[99call]

6 minutes ago, teewinot said:

One of the new guys here.  Did my intro a few weeks ago.

How did you all develop your palate?  Did it just come naturally over time?  I know when I like a cigar but can't seem to pick up the wonderful nuances so many can describe.  I'd be hard pressed to pick out individual flavors.  I read reviews and look at all the different flavors people pick up and am jealous.

Is there a system any of you used to train your palate?  Any advice?

Thank you!

 

I think it's always important to remember the when someone is saying something like "this cigar is literally dripping with chocolate" that it isn't.......I think all seasoned cigars smokers firstly want the 'spine' of a cigar to be there. ie. body, mouthfeel, core quality of tobacco taste, finish etc, then everything else is layers. Again if someone is saying i'm getting 'pure honeycomb' the reality is, is that nuance they are experiencing may seem very strong/present, even if it were to only constitute 5% of the flavour. So, in conclusion, some may just be a little more dramatic about how present something is, or is not. 

There is also just a possible physical difference (that I believe Ken & Rob have referred to before) which is that, some people just have better palate than others. I believe an old sommelier test used to be 16 glasses of water numbered, with differing amount of salt in the water. And if you could correctly put them in order by taste and smell alone, you may have a pretty accurate palate.......Ha, for salt at least

A nuance maybe a fleeting snapshot, or some memory that gets unlocked at that first puff of a given cigar. Someone on here in the last few months described a 1st third of a SP Molino as being like a warm dip in the mediterranean. I think the truth can often be, that trying a wide array of cuisines and cultures can 'unlock' things that you register with cigars. For example, if you've never tried toasted Nigella seeds, it would just pass you by in a cigar that smells strongly of them.  

- be adventurous trying lots of different ingredients, drinks, and foods

- Vary the focus of you're smoking, i.e some times smoke normally with your mouth, sometimes retrohale, sometimes just simply waft the blue smoke off the foot of the cigar in your face, see if the experience differs.

- find cigars that will show you different ends of the spectrum, i.e smoke something like a Rafael Gonzalez Petit Corona, then try a Partagas 898. Trying difficult cigars sometimes tells you more about what you actually want, and what you dont

Happy smoking

 

[JLFIRST]

Before becoming fully disabled, I was a certified flavor chemist. There was many courses I had to take in my post graduate education. I also attended numerous lectures, workshops, and symposiums concentrating on the development of new flavors, identifying known flavors, and doing work for others to help them, and me, continue our flavor knowledge.
The organoleptic knowledge I've learned has been a huge help to identify the different flavors while smoking. This is a knowledge that continues to grow everyday as should anything you want to learn about. I'm going to go through my old papers and notebooks to find some papers that will help everyone here in bettering the understanding of flavor identification. What good is having knowledge if you cannot pass it along to help others.

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[Martin_F]

Some great answers/suggestions here.

Will be very helpful as I try to develop my own taste.

But just like everything else, practice practice practice!

[fitzy]

Retrohaling also sometimes brings out those flavors. Also I noticed leaving the smoke longer in my mouth helps me pick up more. 

[dicko]

I find writing things down really helps. Write a review for FOH!

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[GWG]

I've given up, I just enjoy what I'm smoking now.

[JLFIRST]

I've given up, I just enjoy what I'm smoking now.

Here, Here!

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[teewinot]

Thank you one and all for your insights.  I'll try not to be in a hurry and just enjoy the ride. 

I've been smoking NCs for several years but plan on changing that as soon as I build up some CC stock.  Love the retrohale, but as many have said before as I read old posts, it's hard to do too often with Nicaraguan smokes.

[BrightonCorgi]

Print out a flavor wheel and refer to that while you smoke.

Use a triage method to go from general flavors and work your way down.

[cfc1016]

I grew up in a culinary family. My father started training my palate at an early age. We ate Khmer, Viet, Laos, Thai, Indian, French - all different kinds of cuisine, many very spicy, and he would talk me through the flavors. A lot like @FreedomMN was saying - having someone who knows the nuances helping you to describe what you're tasting is valuable.

 

Here's the kicker though. I smoked cigarettes for ~12 years and seriously damaged my palate. It's been ~4 years since I quit, and I can finally taste details again, but I don't think I'll ever have the olfactory acuity I once did. Does that keep me from enjoying a great cigar? HELL NO. You don't have to have a distinguished palate to enjoy good flavors. Taste is completely subjective, man. Don't let any snobbery convince you that you're 'not smoking it right'. Smoking for flavor is a purely hedonistic pursuit. There's no wrong way to enjoy flavors.

[PrairieSmoke]

21 hours ago, 99call said:

I think it's always important to remember the when someone is saying something like "this cigar is literally dripping with chocolate" that it isn't.......I think all seasoned cigars smokers firstly want the 'spine' of a cigar to be there. ie. body, mouthfeel, core quality of tobacco taste, finish etc, then everything else is layers. Again if someone is saying i'm getting 'pure honeycomb' the reality is, is that nuance they are experiencing may seem very strong/present, even if it were to only constitute 5% of the flavour. So, in conclusion, some may just be a little more dramatic about how present something is, or is not. 

3

This has been the biggest thing for me. So often in cigar reviews, the flavors are stated so strongly that as a novice I was expecting flavors to be more prominent. The more I've smoked, the more I've calibrated my expectations, which has allowed me to connect with other people as they detect the notes and nuances in a cigar.

[cfc1016]

9 hours ago, PrairieSmoke said:

This has been the biggest thing for me. So often in cigar reviews, the flavors are stated so strongly that as a novice I was expecting flavors to be more prominent. The more I've smoked, the more I've calibrated my expectations, which has allowed me to connect with other people as they detect the notes and nuances in a cigar.

Agreed. I used to write really flowery reviews on the old CA forums - really stretch my storytelling skills and break out the obscure adjectives. Made for an interesting read, sure. Didn't really help anyone enjoy their cigars though.

 

Now I'm sick and tired of all the over the top reviewing. I just won't read it. Anything more than 3 short paragraphs (one for each third of the cigar), telling me 1. light/medium/full body 2. most prominent flavors (sweet, savory, spicy, salty, bitter) 3. overall impression 4. MAYBE what the nicotine buzz was like - is just plain TLDR. I'm not gonna read it. I'm not gonna watch it. I just don't care. If it takes more than about 30-60 seconds, I just skip it.

 

My girlfriend and I always make fun of the over the top reviews. "Hints of cardamom" is the line we always drop when we're calling someone a snooty snob. Great example... THIS guy - http://www.cigars-review.org/users/muzza.htm

"IM PROBABLY THE MOST EXPERIENCED CIGAR SMOKER ON THIS WEBSITE- So here is my review." is his tagline with which he starts most of his reviews. Holier-than-thou-ness like this is probably what drives a lot of people away from cigars in the first place.

 

I'm not going to taste things the same way you do... or the way ANYONE else does. The only thing that matters to me in a review is gleaning what the basic profile is. So yeah... I probably have a more refined palate than the average bear, but that doesn't mean that I can tell anyone else, nor can anyone else tell me, what they/I should be tasting.