One of the great satisfactions of cigar smoking is tapping into the sensual, sensory pleasures that the burning leaf provides. As we become more experienced, our ability to discern aroma and flavor notes that are reminiscent of other things can become more acute and enhance our enjoyment of the experience. Cultivating this skill requires three essential elements:
1) The actual experience of the original sensory stimuli
"my mom used to make chocolate-sweet milk brownies when I was growing up"
2) A representation of that original experience in olfactory (smell) memory
"it was a rich cocoa aroma, with a milkiness from the sweetened condensed milk"
3) Focused and effortful practice in letting the experience of the cigar trigger connections in our olfactory sensory memory
"in my first PAM64, I caught a hint of something sweet, by my fifth, it really started to remind me of mom's chocolate sweet-milk brownies"
So, the first key point is that you actually had to have had a sensory experience that you then call up to associate with something you detect while smoking a cigar. The second key point is that aside from certain very strong and clear connections, this is a skill that improves with practice.
An additional complication is that from the sensory sciences, we've learned that people fall into three broad categories with regard to flavor detecting ability. Super tasters have the greatest ability, average tasters are about in the middle and non-tasters tend to detect fewer flavors or only the strongest ones. The primary difference between these three categories is in the density of taste buds on the tongue, however, there is also evidence that super tasters' sensitivities extend beyond the taste buds to subtle differences in brain chemistry and structure. Also, importantly, not only do people have different taste-abilities, but the same mixture of complex scent molecules can be perceived differently and trigger different associations. My cinnamon bun may be your graham cracker.
Here are a few links to interesting articles on tasting.
A great article about tasting and super tasters, with pictures
An interesting article about how our sense of taste can be fooled by other perceptions
An article that lends credence to the technique of blowing a little smoke out your nose to access more flavor notes
A moderately technical description of the neural process of tasting
A short article on bitter tastes and super tasters
So what does this have to do with smoking cigars? Well, when I was starting out, I would read the range of reviews out there and one type would always cause me to wonder whether I was getting everything I could out of a cigar. I'd read them and begin to doubt my own experiences. Anxiety about grabbing every flavor reference I could find would sometimes interfere with the enjoyment...and as we all know, that's just wrong. I call these "esoteric" reviews. They are typically written in flowery prose and include copious amounts of highly specific and uncommon descriptors.
But, if we understand that 1) people naturally have varying levels of tasting ability, 2) we each can perceive and associate scents differently and 3) linking flavor notes to scent memories is a skill that can be improved with practice, then we can see these reviews and our own capabilities in a whole new light. We can be comfortable enjoying our individual experience of smoking the cigar.
Just for curiosity's sake, I carried out a quick word analysis of a recent cigar review written by an established member of an online forum. I extracted the descriptor words (descriptive nouns, adjectives and adverbs) and counted them and compared that count to the total word count. In the case of this review, selected at random, fully 52% of all the words were descriptors. Now I want to make clear that I did not single out this person's work to subject it to ridicule. It is simply his style and way of describing his experience. I want to show an extreme example of the esoteric style to see if there's anything we can learn and use in our own accounts.
Wilkey
Total Descriptors, approximate: 202
Color (24)
Colorado Claro
deep cocoa
Van Dyke brown
burnt sienna cast
straw gold highlighting, around veins
single dark olive water mark, at mid-ship
ochre-tinged sienna
natural walnut
khaki
cocoa
Van Dyke brown
rich umber, imbued with...
pronounced sanguine tone
Physical Characteristics (22)
relatively silky outer leaf
minimal veining
quite similar
very fine tooth
very mild box press
relatively compact roll density, translated to...
medium medium-firm finger feel
good superficial resilience
nicely rendered taper, diminished to...
well-crafted point
exemplary build
Ash & Burn (20)
slightly flaky, chasmal, light to naval grey exterior of ash
more solid dark charcoal interior
cautiously disengaged the ash
variously rounded, blunted, conical, filigree embering tip
burn edge tended to unevenness
pre-light draw
Aroma and On the Palate (118)
archetypal primary VVV fragrance of...
sweet clay earth
cocoa, lightly dusted by
hint of peanuts, embellished by
saddle leather
toffee
faint cedar
cedar, much more forthright
woodiness, bound to
smooth core Cuban leaf
peripheral sensations of...
bitter greens
bell peppers
lime zest
jalapeño, demure hit of
cigar lounge
ripe tobacco
antique furniture and leather upholstery, scents of
sumptuous
discreet sweetness. leaned to
smoke-dried apricots and cherries, evocative of
roasted cocktail nuts
rounded, medium bodied, sagely toasted tobacco
barn hay
calcareous soil striated with rock salt
cedar
white pepper
roasted peanuts and Arabica coffee, subtle overlay of
dried herbs, softly conveyed
zesty vegetal and cedar notes, echoed
simultaneously light and mouth-filling effect
earth-infused tobacco, to the fore
sweet meat quality
surprising
very round
amiable
somewhat remiscent
peak
nuts and coffee, slowly melded into the mix
textural quality, further smoothed by...
veneer of leather
homogeneous whole, amalgamated into
core tastes, never corroded by...
herbal, peppery spices
floral nuances, peeked through
bitterness
Medium to medium-full bodied at the close
Less piquant perkiness and spark
young
superior integration of...
wide-ranging constituent taste aspects
General (18)
quite similar
overall appearance
recent production
higher standard
regular production vitola
superb
summer afternoon cigar
early stage
ideal
Eminently satisfying
well-blended characteristics...
emerged and fused
barely 5 month old
carefully matured tobaccos
1) The actual experience of the original sensory stimuli
"my mom used to make chocolate-sweet milk brownies when I was growing up"
2) A representation of that original experience in olfactory (smell) memory
"it was a rich cocoa aroma, with a milkiness from the sweetened condensed milk"
3) Focused and effortful practice in letting the experience of the cigar trigger connections in our olfactory sensory memory
"in my first PAM64, I caught a hint of something sweet, by my fifth, it really started to remind me of mom's chocolate sweet-milk brownies"
So, the first key point is that you actually had to have had a sensory experience that you then call up to associate with something you detect while smoking a cigar. The second key point is that aside from certain very strong and clear connections, this is a skill that improves with practice.
An additional complication is that from the sensory sciences, we've learned that people fall into three broad categories with regard to flavor detecting ability. Super tasters have the greatest ability, average tasters are about in the middle and non-tasters tend to detect fewer flavors or only the strongest ones. The primary difference between these three categories is in the density of taste buds on the tongue, however, there is also evidence that super tasters' sensitivities extend beyond the taste buds to subtle differences in brain chemistry and structure. Also, importantly, not only do people have different taste-abilities, but the same mixture of complex scent molecules can be perceived differently and trigger different associations. My cinnamon bun may be your graham cracker.
Here are a few links to interesting articles on tasting.
A great article about tasting and super tasters, with pictures
An interesting article about how our sense of taste can be fooled by other perceptions
An article that lends credence to the technique of blowing a little smoke out your nose to access more flavor notes
A moderately technical description of the neural process of tasting
A short article on bitter tastes and super tasters
So what does this have to do with smoking cigars? Well, when I was starting out, I would read the range of reviews out there and one type would always cause me to wonder whether I was getting everything I could out of a cigar. I'd read them and begin to doubt my own experiences. Anxiety about grabbing every flavor reference I could find would sometimes interfere with the enjoyment...and as we all know, that's just wrong. I call these "esoteric" reviews. They are typically written in flowery prose and include copious amounts of highly specific and uncommon descriptors.
But, if we understand that 1) people naturally have varying levels of tasting ability, 2) we each can perceive and associate scents differently and 3) linking flavor notes to scent memories is a skill that can be improved with practice, then we can see these reviews and our own capabilities in a whole new light. We can be comfortable enjoying our individual experience of smoking the cigar.
Just for curiosity's sake, I carried out a quick word analysis of a recent cigar review written by an established member of an online forum. I extracted the descriptor words (descriptive nouns, adjectives and adverbs) and counted them and compared that count to the total word count. In the case of this review, selected at random, fully 52% of all the words were descriptors. Now I want to make clear that I did not single out this person's work to subject it to ridicule. It is simply his style and way of describing his experience. I want to show an extreme example of the esoteric style to see if there's anything we can learn and use in our own accounts.
Wilkey
Total Descriptors, approximate: 202
Color (24)
Colorado Claro
deep cocoa
Van Dyke brown
burnt sienna cast
straw gold highlighting, around veins
single dark olive water mark, at mid-ship
ochre-tinged sienna
natural walnut
khaki
cocoa
Van Dyke brown
rich umber, imbued with...
pronounced sanguine tone
Physical Characteristics (22)
relatively silky outer leaf
minimal veining
quite similar
very fine tooth
very mild box press
relatively compact roll density, translated to...
medium medium-firm finger feel
good superficial resilience
nicely rendered taper, diminished to...
well-crafted point
exemplary build
Ash & Burn (20)
slightly flaky, chasmal, light to naval grey exterior of ash
more solid dark charcoal interior
cautiously disengaged the ash
variously rounded, blunted, conical, filigree embering tip
burn edge tended to unevenness
pre-light draw
Aroma and On the Palate (118)
archetypal primary VVV fragrance of...
sweet clay earth
cocoa, lightly dusted by
hint of peanuts, embellished by
saddle leather
toffee
faint cedar
cedar, much more forthright
woodiness, bound to
smooth core Cuban leaf
peripheral sensations of...
bitter greens
bell peppers
lime zest
jalapeño, demure hit of
cigar lounge
ripe tobacco
antique furniture and leather upholstery, scents of
sumptuous
discreet sweetness. leaned to
smoke-dried apricots and cherries, evocative of
roasted cocktail nuts
rounded, medium bodied, sagely toasted tobacco
barn hay
calcareous soil striated with rock salt
cedar
white pepper
roasted peanuts and Arabica coffee, subtle overlay of
dried herbs, softly conveyed
zesty vegetal and cedar notes, echoed
simultaneously light and mouth-filling effect
earth-infused tobacco, to the fore
sweet meat quality
surprising
very round
amiable
somewhat remiscent
peak
nuts and coffee, slowly melded into the mix
textural quality, further smoothed by...
veneer of leather
homogeneous whole, amalgamated into
core tastes, never corroded by...
herbal, peppery spices
floral nuances, peeked through
bitterness
Medium to medium-full bodied at the close
Less piquant perkiness and spark
young
superior integration of...
wide-ranging constituent taste aspects
General (18)
quite similar
overall appearance
recent production
higher standard
regular production vitola
superb
summer afternoon cigar
early stage
ideal
Eminently satisfying
well-blended characteristics...
emerged and fused
barely 5 month old
carefully matured tobaccos
