Learning to Taste

When I started, every cigar tasted like a cigar. Smoke, a little pepper, some warmth, and not much I could put words to. People around me would talk about cocoa and leather and cedar, and I'd nod and taste smoke. For a while I figured they were making it up, or that I just didn't have the nose for it.

Neither is true. A palate is built, not handed to you. The people picking out cedar have smoked enough, and paid enough attention while they did, that the differences sorted themselves out over time. You can do the same on a handful of cigars a year. It just takes doing it on purpose. Here's what's worked for me.

Start with the easy things. Before you go hunting for flavors, notice what anyone can feel on the first day. How strong is it, meaning does it go to your head a little. How heavy it sits, light and easy or thick on the tongue. And the finish, whether the taste hangs around after the smoke is gone or leaves right away. None of that needs a vocabulary. It's the difference between two cigars said plainly, and once you can feel those three things, the flavors have somewhere to attach.

Slow down. This is the most common beginner mistake and the easiest to fix. Puff too often and the cigar runs hot, and a hot cigar tastes harsh and flat, and they all start to taste the same. Give it a rest between draws. Let it cool. A cigar smoked slowly tastes of more, and you'll notice the difference the first time you make yourself wait.

Then learn to retrohale. This is the one that changed things for me. Instead of letting all the smoke back out your mouth, push a little of it up and out through your nose. Most of what people call taste is actually smell, and your mouth on its own gets almost none of it. The nose is where the cocoa and the cedar live. Start with the smallest amount you can manage, because too much at once will sting, and work up from there. It feels strange for about three cigars and then it feels like cheating.

Smell it before you even light it. Take the unlit cigar and smell the foot, the end you're going to light. Then clip it and draw on it cold, no flame. You get a preview of where the thing is headed, it costs nothing, and it trains your nose while you're at it.

One trick I lean on: I look up the cigar's notes beforehand, then try to catch just one of them. Not the whole list. If the maker says espresso, I'm only hunting for the espresso, and once I think I've got it, that's the one I carry into the next cigar to see if it turns up again. It gives you a word to hang the taste on without pretending you caught all six. The one caution is to hold those notes loosely. They're marketing and one other person's tongue. If the box says espresso and what you taste is sweet and a little woody, that's the real answer, not a wrong one.

Give yourself something to compare against. The hardest thing is tasting a cigar cold with nothing beside it. So keep one you smoke often as your ruler, the one you know, and judge new ones against it. Smoother or sharper than my usual. Stronger or milder. More or less of whatever you've taught yourself to notice. Comparing is far easier than describing from scratch. It's also why, when I've got a long afternoon set aside, I'll sometimes skip the one big cigar and smoke two smaller ones back to back instead, and spend the second one thinking about what changed. The contrast does the teaching for you.

Last, write one line down. After a cigar, before you forget, put down a single plain sentence about what stood out. Not a score, not a paragraph. “Peppery start, went smooth and a little sweet by the end.” That's all. Do it for a year and you've got your own reference, in your own words, which is worth more than any list someone else wrote.

None of this is about performing at a table, reciting notes like a wine list. It's about noticing more than you did the time before. Do it long enough and you stop tasting smoke and start tasting the cigar.

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