Cigar Tasting - Please participate.

[psygardelic]

I have been meaning to put this together for awhile. I hope to make it into a nice looking reference for novice smokers, like myself, to use as a reference to enhance their cigar smoking experience. I know this looks like a long read but if you can take your time to read it and contribute please do.
Mods - if you find this post misplaced accept my apologies and please relocate it but I feel this is the perfect forum for it.
LLGs - if you find this post to be an idiotic newbie thread that should be trashed, then

Cigar Tasting Notes

Introduction, if your short of time. Skip down to the questions below.

Smoking a cigar can be a very enjoyable experience but to truly embrace this experience one needs to be fully conscious of the depth and intricacy of the cigars characteristics. For the novice smoker, this task can be a bit difficult. I constantly find myself finding a particular taste to be very familiar but I can never put my finger on exactly what it is. To remedy this I usually have my wife or a good friend take a couple puffs and then tell me what the taste resembles to them. As the smoke gently rolls around the surface of your tongue it stimulates the various papillae, those being sweet, sour, salt, and bitter. I recall when I smoked my first Bolivar Culebra, I continually noticed the taste of salt and that was the first time that has ever occurred which made me start thinking about methods of detecting and documenting the characteristics of each stick.

Nose Smoking

I soon found that by exhaling the smoke out through my nose, which can be done without actually inhaling, a completely new set of tastes and flavors are activated. Because some cigars produce smoke that is very irritating to the nasal passage I began classifying them in the following order increasing in harshness: Nose Tickler, Nose Pincher, and Nose Biter being the most intense of the three. When smoking a Nose Tickler you can usually exhale through the nose a few times before it starts to tingle but if you continue to do this too long, it will begin to burn a bit.

I rarely utilize nose smoking more than three times during one sitting as that is usually enough times to reveal the hidden flavor characteristics throughout the entire cigar: The Beginning, Middle, and End. The Nose Pincher is just a bit more harsh and I usually wont nasal it more than once, or more than I have to in order to release the hidden flavor. The Nose Biters are the heavy sticks that make your eyes water when you nose smoke them. The classification can vary from individual to individual based upon their tolerance to full bodied cigars. What is a palatable nasal stick to one may be a full bodied Sinus Raper to a novice.



Now back to the point of flavor observations. It is my goal to make a simple list of flavor characteristics commonly observered when smoking a cigar and possibly either giving an example of a cigar that bares this flavor and/or give an example of what the flavor may resemble (i.e. Cocoa notes - Onyx reserve - Resembles the flavors of Cappicino / Coffee but slightly less bitter). So here I am asking for your help in making a simple list based on your personal experience of the various flavors found when smoking cigars. One could simply pick up an issue of CA and copy down their notes in the back but I personally cannot relate to the observations of these highly experienced professional smokers. I want to learn from you guys and I hope that maybe other novice smokers, like myself, will be able to enhance their cigar smoking experience by using these notes.

Which flavors do you prefer and which ones do you find undesirable? Personal Cocoa, Coffee, and Herbal are my favorite characteristics while Leather and certain Woody flavors I find to be undesirable. Do you find one particular wrapper variety to often or always possess a certain taste characteristic? Hows abouts a particular straight/size of a cigar possessing a certain taste characteristic? What about grouping, do you often find the same few flavors to often be associated with each other and in the same stick (like cedar, anise, and cream often being bunched together throughout different smokes)? I'm very curious to see how other individuals palates differ from my own.

Flavor Characteristics

Anise
Cedar
Cocoa
Coffee
Cream
Dark Chocolate
Leather
Mint
Oily - [SIZE=1]often used mainly to describe the wrapper quality but i've seen this described in tasting..[/SIZE]
Spice
Sweet
Wood

You see, the above list is nearly completely worthless to me as they are not notes of my own, but rather taste descriptions taken straight out of other reviews. The tastes that I often find my cigar possessing are a bit more strange and i'm not sure if others can relate. But here are a few:

Good Sex -[SIZE=1] a nice piece of ass - I'm being 100% serious here. I've smoked a Cojimar that sent me into a complete erotic flashback[/SIZE]

Porkchops - [SIZE=1]Also meat and steak , that mouth watering flavor[/SIZE]
Lowry Seasoning - [SIZE=1]Often Bunched with Meat and Porkchop (Also Animal Fat) tastes.[/SIZE]
Wedding Cake - [SIZE=1]This differs from icing as it is a more bready flavor[/SIZE]
A Pound Of Icing - [SIZE=1]aka Drowning in a pound of vanilla icing - A common characteristic of some flavored smokes[/SIZE]

Compost - [SIZE=1]Not to be confused with chemical, grassy or ammonia but a more desirable taste [/SIZE]
Pleasant Fermentations - [SIZE=1]More of a bready alcohol taste than that of Compost. I often call this 'Rum' or 'Whisky'.[/SIZE]
Under the Sink - [SIZE=1]chemical. Down and dirty ammonia.. - these cigars need to be forgotten and aged for a few years before smoked.[/SIZE]
Coumarin - [SIZE=1]This resembles cut grass but is much more sweet tasting and more desirable.[/SIZE]
cis-3-hexenol / trans-2-hexenal - [SIZE=1]aka Leaf Alcohol or Leaf Aldehyde this is nasty ass grass taste. Undesirable.[/SIZE]
Grandmas Perfume - [SIZE=1]This is the main characteristic of nearly all ACID and Natural cigars.[/SIZE]
Muratic acid - [SIZE=1]This is often found in nose biters and full bodied smokes.[/SIZE]

I have many more that I commonly used but I'm already 30 minutes late for work and its a 15 minute drive so I must conclude this for now.

Also, Can someone please explain what the finish of a cigar means? I often read "Had a short finish" or "Had a long finish" and even regarding the certain flavor characteristics of the finish (ie Oily Finish) but I do not understand if this is classified on a particular length of the cigar (ie last two inches).

I can't wait to see what you guys think about cigar flavors and nose smoking (this could deffinately use a better term ). So don't be shy, if you think of smoking a cigar as having good sex let us know! Lets make a nice big reference list so next time I'm scratching my head thinking 'I recall this taste but I just can't put my finger on it' I can remedy that by saying "Oh Yeah! I remember this taste just like trans-2-hexenal!!!"

Thank you for your precious time. Now, smoke more cigars.

[Scott M]

A little more about "nose" smoking. An excellent observation, although I find that the Cuban cigars I've tried this with have been better suited for this due to their complexity, and they're easier on the schnozz.

As for the rest of your post/request, I'm gonna need a HECK of alot more time to help you out much. I CAN say that for the moment, there are too many factors that can effect the cigars I'm smoking, and the only cigars I've smoked with great frequency are Padron 2ks and Fumas, Punch Pita Maduro, and a few Boli PCs. The things that effect the cigars flavor include what I ate before, what I'm drinking while I'm smoking, the condition of the cigar, storage RH, ambient RH, (things that greatly effect it's burn), to name a few.

I'll give a something when I can.

Scott"willgettoiteventually"M

Oh...the finish, IIRC, is synonomous with aftertaste.

[altbier]

OK, by your description, I am looking for a cigar with the following characterisitcs:
Dark Chocolate
Good Sex - a nice piece of ass
Pleasant Fermentations
I juts like the fermentations......
Call it tha Naomi Watts of cigars
Any ideas?

[singlguy9]

If you find a cigar that taste like a woman's @#$$&, let me know and I'll buy all of em'!!!!!

[Blueface]

I think a neat thing would be to have an unforgetable cigar that you can describe as "good sex", "under the sink" (a large, large sink with lots of leg room) with someone NOT wearing "grandma's perfume".

[singlguy9]

[(909)]

Originally Posted by altbier

OK, by your description, I am looking for a cigar with the following characterisitcs:
Dark Chocolate
Good Sex - a nice piece of ass
Pleasant Fermentations
I juts like the fermentations......
Call it tha Naomi Watts of cigars
Any ideas?

I think that Bill Clintons cigars had most of those qualifications

[floydp]

Originally Posted by singlguy9

If you find a cigar that taste like a woman's @#$$&, let me know and I'll buy all of em'!!!!!

I swear one of the Diesel's by Rocky Patel smelled very similar.. Prelit I mean..

[Jason Love III]

Originally Posted by floydp

I swear one of the Diesel's by Rocky Patel smelled very similar.. Prelit I mean..

Is that a good thing? Because.....uh.....

[Nely]

Scott nailed it. There are many factors that affect a cigar's taste. I was recently told by someone I respect here, that taste can also be affected by the amount of food you may have consumed right before smoking the cigar. I have paid attention to it and it does seem that I can pick up more of the cigars flavor when I havent had anything to eat 3-4 hours prior. Of course the buzz is a lot more pronounced.
I think you rounded up a good, and interesting set of terms to describe your experience. In most NC's I notice a lot of cocoa, chocolate, strong coffee notes, as well as a smooth cream note (the latter specially in gran habanos cigars, in corojo wrapper) and even molasses in some maduros. With cubans it gets very complex, I taste wood, spice, cream, and a bunch of others that I can't figure out what it is. Its very hard trying to figure out what you are tasting and give it a name. I remember smoking a Pshort and all of the sudden it reminded me of a great fishing day I had with clear skies, bright sun and that nice ocean breeze, and yes I'm sure it was a Party short, nothing else and it didn't taste like fish. Try to figure that one out.

[DonVon]

Originally Posted by singlguy9

If you find a cigar that taste like a woman's @#$$&, let me know and I'll buy all of em'!!!!!

That's just wrong. I could go into deeper detail as to why I would stay away from tasting a woman's ass, but I'll just end it here.

About your post. I think it's great that you have such an interest in cigars. What I am about to say is totally my opinion, and nothing I would force on anyone else. Before I get into it I want to quote a friend I made @ a cigar shop I goto. I had started smoked a Hoyo, and I asked him if he liked the cigar, he responded by saying that he had tried it a while back and didn't like it much. As I got comfortable with the stick, I really began enjoying it, so I turned to him and said "you really didn't like this cigar???" He said one of the greatest lines I have heard. He said, "Listen, you enjoyed a cigar I didn't particularly like, that doesn't mean we still can't be friends." I thought that was such an awesome, simple, and well thought out response. He wasn't being rude in the least, he delivered it with a humble smile and the fact that he included friendship (which had nothing to do with my question) made it very charming.

Anyway I got a bit off track, so let's get into how that story relates to your post. I can totally relate to your post. When I started smoking I thought it was such an amazing, fun, cool, exciting thing that I wanted to do everything all at once. I get that same feeling reading your post. It seems like you are trying to categorize things, set patterns, and understand things. What I have learned is that a cigar's complexity is most greatly appreciated in it's simplicity (IMHO). Instead of devoting my total attention to the cigar (like I used to), I have found it more enjoyable having the cigar as a compliment to time spent with great people. Conversations and the ambiance are greatly enhanced by a cigar, but when it comes right down to it, all we are doing is smoking a leaf. I can understand how Freud got the line "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar", and I do agree sometimes it's more, but the beauty of smoking is that it's different for everybody and shouldn't have limits set on it.

[Moglman]

Originally Posted by singlguy9

If you find a cigar that taste like a woman's @#$$&, let me know and I'll buy all of em'!!!!!

You just need to know where to get your cigars! Altbier already gave us a hint!

http://www.clubstogie.com/vb/showpos...69&postcount=3
or
http://www.thats-****ed-up.com/conte...arstuffer.html

obviously you need to replace the *s with appropriate characters

why am I perpetuating this?

[psygardelic]

Very Very interesting responses. Thank you all very much. I also understand that varying factors can effect the way a cigar tastes however what my main question and focus is being able to identify and name the taste. There is some defect in my brain where I can't pin point what a cigars flavor resembles and in order to make better reviews and such, I thought that getting some others insight into flavor would help. But these responses have been way more than helpful and I particularly appreciate the post by DonVon "a cigar's complexity is most greatly appreciated in it's simplicity" This is a beautiful statement. Absolutely moving.Thank you.

So, with the notions from the previous posts I will end this post as I am satisfied. I see that the mentality here differs greatly than from the understanding of cigars put out by norm (CA/CInsider , if you consider them the trend setters.. media.)

I often have trouble describing the intricacy of what I am smoking and when I can identify the particular flavors it seems to make the experience much more enjoyable (familiar is comforting). I like DonVons holistic approach to enjoying the entire essense of the cigar rather than trying to break it down into a million different words and over analize it, which I tend to do with EVERY aspect of my life.

I have learned a lot today. Both from the individuals that I met at todays herf, where I got to personally meet Juan Lopez of Carlos Torano and had 6 cigars personally rolled for me by one of Torano's rollers (with the purchase of 20 cigars that is, i'm going to make a post about this later for more details), as well as learning a lot from all of my new friends here on www.clubstogie.com (I recommended this forum to about 6 different folks I met at the herf). Thank you all so much.

Regarding a cigar tasting like hot sex... Like you guys say, what you eat before and while you are smoking a stogie greatly affects the overall taste of the cigar. heh.

also in response to: "That's just wrong. I could go into deeper detail as to why I would stay away from tasting a woman's ass, but I'll just end it here. -donvon"


I would like to quote Moglman as saying "You just need to know where to get your [Ass]" yummy!

[DonVon]

Originally Posted by entheomation

also in response to: "That's just wrong. I could go into deeper detail as to why I would stay away from tasting a woman's ass, but I'll just end it here. -donvon"


I would like to quote Moglman as saying "You just need to know where to get your [Ass]" yummy!

LMAO, yea I'll go ass shopping this weekend! BTW thank you for the very kind words. It's very obvious that you will be an awesome addition to this board.

[DonVon]

Originally Posted by entheomation

... holistic ...

Forgot to add. Great use of vocab, I learned a new word (love when that happens ) For anyone else that doesn't know what it means, it basically means concentrating on the whole instead of the parts. Like holistic medicine etc...

PPS

Sounds like an awesome herf you went to, you should definetly post about it. I would love to meet some of the top dogs in the industry.