Putting together a wrapper study

[El Presidente]

The impact of wrapper on the flavour of a cigar is always an interesting topic. let's see if we can shed some light. 

Let's start in formulating a study that we can control.  This is where we need your input. 

Our tools:

• Alex can roll Puntilla to an exact blend. Well, as exact as you can get anywhere. 
• We are there in November and can have the cigars ready to go. 
• I will bring tasting sheets and devise a location for 8 tasters to try each cigar at the same time (11am) on three consecutive days.  It will be the first cigar of the day. 

 

Have a crack at devising the study. Please bounce off each others work. 

 

 

[Cigarsandmalts]

This one I’d do blind - literally. Blindfold the tasters so they cannot see the color of the wrapper as visual cues often precondition our expectations. Sensory deprivation also heightens the un-deprived senses so the tasters can really focus on the taste, aroma, and mouthfeel of the cigar. Have non-smoking attendees help by taking pictures and replenishing drinks (water or seltzer to not skew taste), obviously.

Of course taking notes might be hard blindfolded, but the average smartphone is great at dictation (the technophobes can use a tape recorder). If you want to prevent groupthink or sheep mentality, hand out different shades to different tasters (a pseudo double blind) and have the tasters rate each cigar and guess what wrapper shade he/she had on each day. 

This sounds incredibly fun, actually. How about a 3-pack (one of each shade) of the Puntilla if you use this suggestion so I can run it with the group too, prez? 

[planetary]

Will you have access to Cuban maduro wrappers?

[SirVantes]

Do we know if wrapping the binder over the wrapper affects the cigar in any way? If it doesn’t, this will mask the appearance of the wrapper, and enable a blind tasting without altering sensory parameters.  

Or we do actual blindfolds and get finger burning, ash dropping, drink toppling fun. Upload the video please. 

[Fuzz]

9 hours ago, Cigarsandmalts said:

This one I’d do blind - literally. Blindfold the tasters so they cannot see the color of the wrapper as visual cues often precondition our expectations. Sensory deprivation also heightens the un-deprived senses so the tasters can really focus on the taste, aroma, and mouthfeel of the cigar. Have non-smoking attendees help by taking pictures and replenishing drinks (water or seltzer to not skew taste), obviously.

 

Seriously? This is going to be done in Cuba, where the rum flows freely. I'd be surprised if any of the tasters could sit upright in their chairs, and you want to deprive more of their senses?!

[JamesKPolkEsq]

I want to see some wrappers of non-cuban origin thrown on one of the cigars to see if folks can really tell the difference  

[Islandboy]

8 hours ago, Fuzz said:

Seriously? This is going to be done in Cuba, where the rum flows freely. I'd be surprised if any of the tasters could sit upright in their chairs, and you want to deprive more of their senses?!

At 11 am? That’s hardcore!

[Fuzz]

10 minutes ago, Islandboy said:

At 11 am? That’s hardcore!

Not really. You never sober up from the night before.

[Islandboy]

Just now, Fuzz said:

Not really. You never sober up from the night before.

Excellent point.

[fitzy]

How about the smoker is blind folded and is given two cigars. One regular and one with the first inch or two of the wrapper removed. See if he/she can tell if there is any taste difference and which the smoker thinks is the wrapperless cigar. Also this should really be done with two different RG cigars. A small ring gauge and a largish ring gauge. 

[dominattorney]

A lot of good ideas.  Personally, the binder over the wrapper seems the most practical, as it allows for a tasting of the entire cigar over the course of it's evolution.  Perhaps wrapper influence is more prominent in the second third, for instance?  Who knows.  I'd like to see one cigar without a wrapper at all, one with a light wrapper, one with a "normal" wrapper and one with a maduro wrapper to see what if any effect can be gleaned on the baseline blend.  One would seem to be led to the conclusion that placing the binder over the wrapper would not have a significant effect, and this would solve the issue of the visual impact of the wrapper impacting the expectations of the taster, but how do we know this to be true?

[Kitchen]

Personally I would be curious to know how will you be differentiating the wrappers?  Are they only going to be different by shade and color, or will you be able to use different wrappers from different farms with different soils? 

[ayepatz]

As other posters have said, the tricky thing is to separate the visual element from the tasting experience, if the influence on taste is what we are trying to discern here.

The old adage that “We taste first with the eyes“ has much truth to it. Think of any good meal/glass of wine/Rob PSP cigar you’ve ever enjoyed, and ask yourself how much your anticipation, and therefore critical faculties, were stimulated by the presentation.

Smoking blindfolded addresses this in the simplest way, rather than having poor Alex start rolling cigars “inside out”.

I can’t see it being much of a problem if there is a helper on hand to deal with lighting, ashing, drink replenishing, etc.

It might be worth repeating the test, with the same cigars and tasters, but allowing a visual assessment the second time, to see if that influences the individual verdicts.

[garbandz]

taste them in the dark.............