Bryan,
I'd be pleased to pass the mantle of flavored cigar maven to you.
I do smoke the occasional CAO flavored, but only because people have sent me enough to last the rest of my natural life. And by this, I mean maybe a dozen. So please don't send any more! I've got Honeys, CAO, White Owls, and Acids enough to kill a guy.
What I have noticed is that the vast majority of flavored cigars are actually more accurately described as
"scented" cigars. By this, I mean that the aromatics and flavorings that are added are done so primarily to provide an
"incense effect." You can
smell it coming from the warm end, but you do not really
taste it in the drawn smoke. There are two good reasons for this.
First: Aromatic compounds almost never taste on the palate the way the smell in the air. One reason is that the temperatures involved in smoldering and combustion changes these compounds, destroying some and altering others to become flavorless or in the worst case, foul tasting.
Second: The average person's nose is relatively more sensitive at detecting low levels of sensory molecules than is their tongue. Remember from the posts on cigar tasting how there are non-tasters, regular tasters, and super-tasters? Whereas the vast majority of tasters are in the regular category, the average level of scent acuity is higher. I have not found any research to back that up. I'm drawing that from my personal observations and general readings on the subject.
So, to put the two together, you only require small amounts of smelly stuff to make a cigar smell.
This also gives us a clue as to why almost all scented cigars have sugar-dipped heads. I believe it is to provide a taste-based cue to fool the mind into thinking that the scented cigar is delivering a unified organoleptic stimulus experience. In other words, a "real" cigar stimulates the sense of smell
and of taste in a manner with which we are familiar. With a scented cigar, when you skew the stimulus balance with a novel smell, the brain seeks a taste to couple with the smell to provide the semblance of balanced smell and taste stimuli. Keep in mind that this is only speculation. A hypothesis perhaps.
So, perhaps you guys will accept that as the last word on me and flavored/scented cigars. Really, almost without exception, these things are made with, in the best case, inoffensive tobaccos. So for me, as a "cigar" they are judged on that standard and the smell just takes more points away. I have not smoked any of the expensive liquor-infused cigars so I cannot comment on that class. Seems to me that I'd rather smoke a good cigar and drink a shot of good bourbon than combine the two into something that, though meant to accentuate the strengths of both, more likely serves to mask their respective weakenesses.
Wilkey
