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Where Do The "Hints" Of Flavor Come From?

My .02 as a F.O.G. Interesting question!

I thought all the taste profiling was horse pucky until I ran across my first truly GREAT Cuban cigar. It was a Romeo y Julietta and it has an EXTREMELY pronounced flavor of HAZELNUT, COFFEE, and CHOCOLATE. Amazing! Best cigar I've ever experienced and I'm thankful F-O-R the experience.

Tastes that I have encountered for real:

Bolivars from Cuba sometimes have a SALTY taste. I have ran across the same thing in Ramone Allones, sometimes very pronounced.

I smoked a Quai d' Orsay Imperiales last fall that tasted like TEA, very floral. Mild, yet with a nice undertone of subtle flavors, and very good. I kept thinking of the word elegant while smoking it.

Partagas, and many other cigars, Opus X and VSG's are PEPPERY...no doubt about it.

I've smoked some cigars that have had a nice blend of tobacco and CEDAR. When a cigar is slightly SWEET with a touch of cedar, they're great. It's hard to find a cigar with the correct blend though.

Pencil lead, roasted meat, bubble gum - I'll be darned if I've ever run across those.

I'm not even sure about the leathery discription. Some dog rockets just plain old taste like card board.

I think that the tastes come from the soil, the blend of leaves, the amount of aging and fermentation that the leaves are allowed to undergo, etc. Cohibas are famous for undergoing three fermentations, which is one more than some other Cuban cigars.

Using more leaves from higher up on the tobacco stalk adds more strength in the cigar. Ligero, ever heard of it? Those are the top leaves on the stalk and the most potent. But I was only raised on a tobacco farm, so what do I know! LMAO!

Very good question.

Sam
 
When testing to be a wine snob, you can go and purchase testing vials that contain certain flavors
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Tony, when I was learning to be a wine snob (some people call them judges), for the first week or so we didn't taste any wine whatsoever. We mixed up solutions of sugar water, salt water, etc. to learn to recognize the individual tastes and then combined them in different proportions to learn about balance. With wine, it's all about balance, especially balance between sugar and acidity, since those are the primary flavors in wine. Balance is better in cigars too...I'd rather have pepper balanced by some nuttiness and sweetness than one that was just peppery. However, I think I could tolerate a cigar that was just peppery better than a wine that is just sweet. Ick.

Eventually we got around to using the tasting kit with all the vials of different scents, but at first we broke it down to the basics. I wonder if there's a class somewhere to learn to be a cigar judge. :lookup:
 
The same cigar can have different flavoring each time too. The Hemingway Short Story is a prime example of that for me. Each one while it does have similar characteristics whenever I write down the review for it in the Dossier and then look back there are some major differences. It still scores very high, but the subtle tastes are always somewhat askewed from each other.

Sam
 
This is true. Part of it is differences in the cigars themselves and part of it is differences in...us. We're not the same day to day, we eat different things every day, drink different things while we smoke, listen to different music. In short, none of us are the same person we were yesterday. In addition, there is variation from year to year in cigars just like wine, plus there is often a good bit of "bottle variation" in cigars from the same year or even the same box. A review is like a snapshot. It's accurate only for that moment in time. However, if you average a lot of them together, the variations will average out and the true nature of the cigar will be exposed.
 
Folks, if you don't mind, a really new guy would like to add to this.

I think the most truthful answer to this query lies hidden in several (and possibly most) of the answers you've all written here (excluding the my nuts or dees nuts comment :D )

Each one of us is different. And each one of us different people react differently to the chemical reactions that occur in our mouths. And to go even deeper, the same chemicals will react differently in each one of our mouths as well.

All living matter is composed of similar (and often same) elements. Including various plant and animal life. For example: a pepper corn might possibly (and does actually) have similar chemical composition (in specific areas of the corn) as a tobacco leaf, some "spice" plants and even a couple of nuts. So, it stands to reason that some of the reactions occuring in your mouth with tobacco smoke (heat is the best catalyst for reaction by the way) will resemble or mimic the reaction you get with pepper and/or some nuts. Now, as was stated, depending on the growing environment, the composition of the tobacco leaf will vary (often greatly) and may resemble other items. So, it is quite possible for someone to taste the minerals from the soil or gum (from a gum tree BTW) or nuts or even leather like tastes while smoking a cigar.

Now, having said all of that, it was also mentioned that your olfactory senses come into play and can significantly change the taste of the gar. That's also entirely true. There's also the mood your in when you smoke the cigar. Ever eaten something that you ordinarily just love and been repulsed by it for some reason? Could've been cause you were pissed off. Maybe you were pissed because you just put something that tastes like two day old piss in your mouth :D (that one's for PB)

And, of course the taste and smell will remind you of experiences from the past. I even went so far as to say (because I really did) that I tasted Pumpkin Pie in my review of a Cuban Partagas (see A Newbies Take ISOM style.)

So, mood, taste, smell, and even past experience all play into it. No wonder your really lucky if you can ever find a cigar that tastes the same twice!

I know this is kind of long winded (definately more than 2 cents worth) but, this is just to bring your answers all together. Forgive me.

:)
 
Isn't it also possible for the taste of the smoke to be influenced by what the smoker is drinking at the time or what they have just eaten? For instance, coffee vs. whiskey or iced tea vs. beer? Or maybe the smoker has just finished eating nachos or a hot fudge sundae. Can't the combination of the drink and the smoke change the cigar's flavor, perhaps bringing out the cocoa or nuttiness or spiciness? I have read reviews that say, for instance, that a certain cigar goes well with coffee. I don't pretend to be an expert - just my 2 cents.
 
Don't be disappointed if you don't taste what someone else does. I haven't done any serious "cigar tasting," but I can relate to this through my experience with coffee. Coffee is more complex than wine, and reviews will often parallel those of fine wines. Common flavors are chocolate, berries, nuts, leather, woody, or earthy, depending on the bean. But these are subtle flavors, you may not taste them in every sip. I'm sure the same thing applies with cigars. The flavors are there, but so subtle at times that you may not find them even when looking for them. It's more like you just happen to notice it's there, it just dawns on you out of nowhere. So just enjoy what you like, don't worry about looking for flavors, just enjoy what it puts in front of you.
 
IMHO, the slight differences in the tobacco flavor that
reviewers may pick up come from the composition of
the soil in which the tobacco was grown. There may
also be some effect from the strain of tobacco seed
used.

Whether or not reviewers can taste the subtle differences
in tobacco grown in DR, Hon., Cuba or Nic., CT or VA is
uncertain. Only after several years of smoking can I pick
out a few subtle nuances in taste. Perhaps others with a better
sense of taste find more 'flavors'. One of the things that
intrigued me on my first cigar, was that I was able to get a
'creamy' lick of smoke in my mouth, which I've searched
for since.

I have experienced cream, butter, spice(pepper), and a few
other hints of flavor. But not all that many. Most reviewers
are probably repressed writers, IMHO.

Chemyst :cool:
 
With only four basic flavor receptors, it's still amazing the flavors that can come through clearly. I'm no expert reviewer, but there's a difference between, for example, a white pepper and a black pepper flavor to me . . . based perhaps as much on my love of and familiarity with pepper as on the cigar itself, true, but what I taste is what I taste.

A good chemist could probably tell you what it is in tobacco that ferments into a coffee bean flavor, or a cocoa one. Winston Churchills have a taste somewhere between oyster and mushroom, and I get hints of it in everything else Davidoff makes. It sounds a little disgusting, but IRL it's kind of an intriguing "WTF was that? Better have another puff and think about it!" experience.

Illusione ~888~ has a black cherry undertone. Not just cherry, black cherry. I dunno why. but I like it.

Don Lino Africas taste like steak.

I think it's probably the aging and fermenting as much as anything. Tobacco has a lot of chemical compounds going on to begin with; let 'em age and steep and mix and there's no telling what might come bubbling up.

~Boar
 
Isn't it just tobacco you ask... Why yes... but consider:

Isn't wine just fermented grapes?

Isn't whisky just fermented grain mash?

Isn't coffee just some roasted beans?


Yet with the above mentioned products, a huge variety of flavours can be explored between one batch and the next. They are not just the derivative of the base product.
 
Not A Nice Person said:
Illusione ~888~ has a black cherry undertone. Not just cherry, black cherry. I dunno why. but I like it.
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The original Noella Reserva cigars had that same flavor for me, too. Can't say I've gotten it with the Illusiones, but I know where you're coming from. :)
 
Just a straight up rookie question, but might the differing tastes have something to do with how the cigars are stored. A mild cigars buried in your humi with a pile of strong cigars. Might that impart a completely different set of tastes to a smoke you have had previously?
 
Macion Grey said:
Isn't it just tobacco you ask... Why yes... but consider:

Isn't wine just fermented grapes?

Isn't whisky just fermented grain mash?

Isn't coffee just some roasted beans?


Yet with the above mentioned products, a huge variety of flavours can be explored between one batch and the next. They are not just the derivative of the base product.
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I may be wrong, but the esters actually exist in products like wine, whisky and coffee. They don't in burning tobacco. Therefore, IMHO, those flavors, one seems to taste in burning tobacco, are figments of over active imaginations, perpetrated on the cigar smoking community, by those idiots at CA during the cigar boom.

Doc.
 
Pardon me while I post pad. We have already established that tastes are subjective. But do the nuisances of flavor transfer from stick to stick in the humi. In other words the VSG that has the steak flavor, to that persons palette, could the VSG impart a steak flavor to another say milder stick simply by being stored together for a period of time? Regardless of whether or not these flavors actually exist.
 
Not A Nice Person said:
Illusione ~888~ has a black cherry undertone. Not just cherry, black cherry. I dunno why. but I like it.

~Boar
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I smoked an Illusione ~88~ the other night and picked up the subtle taste of cherry skins. Not so much the sweet taste of the flesh, but the skin.

Also I swear I picked up the taste of Citrus off a DCM the other day. It was strange because I usually only get the stronger tastes like leather, wood, spice/pepper, hay/grass, cocoa, and coffee.

But like Doc said, we assign to taste to things. We taste what we know, if you've never chewed on a baseball mitt you won't be able to describe the taste of leather.
 
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