Cigar Reviewing, Tasting and Memory

[Ginseng]

I was so inspired by Ken's post about flavours in cigars that I reassembled some things I had written for another cigar bulletin board. Here's my take on the situation from an amateur's perspective.

*********************************

One of the great satisfactions of cigar smoking is tapping into the sensual, sensory pleasures that the burning leaf provides. As we become more experienced, our ability to discern aroma and flavor notes that are reminiscent of other things can become more acute and enhance our enjoyment of the experience. Cultivating this skill requires three essential elements:

1) The actual experience of the original sensory stimuli

"my mom used to make chocolate-sweet milk brownies when I was growing up"

2) A representation of that original experience in olfactory (smell) memory

"it was a rich cocoa aroma, with a milkiness from the sweetened condensed milk"

3) Focused and effortful practice in letting the experience of the cigar trigger connections in our olfactory sensory memory

"in my first PAM64, I caught a hint of something sweet, by my fifth, it really started to remind me of mom's chocolate sweet-milk brownies"

So, the first key point is that you actually had to have had a sensory experience that you then call up to associate with something you detect while smoking a cigar. The second key point is that aside from certain very strong and clear connections, this is a skill that improves with practice.

Regarding the issue of remembering, you will be well ahead of the curve when it comes to the skill of tasting if you start a disciplined habit of recording your observations and impressions of the smoking experience. The practice of recording notes is so very important if one is interested in 1) tracing the development of one's skills, 2) establishing a tasting history with a given cigar and 3) building an active and accessible descriptive vocabulary. Human memory is both malleable and fallible while a tasting journal is a permanent record of our experiences.

An additional complication is that from the sensory sciences, we've learned that people fall into three broad categories with regard to flavor detecting ability. Super tasters have the greatest ability, average tasters are about in the middle and non-tasters tend to detect fewer flavors or only the strongest ones. The primary difference between these three categories is in the density of taste buds on the tongue, however, there is also evidence that super tasters' sensitivities extend beyond the taste buds to subtle differences in brain chemistry and structure. Also, importantly, not only do people have different taste-abilities, but the same mixture of complex scent molecules can be perceived differently and trigger different associations.

Here are a few links to interesting articles on tasting.

A great article about tasting and super tasters, with pictures

An interesting article about how our sense of taste can be fooled by other perceptions

An article that lends credence to the technique of blowing a little smoke out your nose to access more flavor notes

A moderately technical description of the neural process of tasting

A short article on bitter tastes and super tasters

So what does this have to do with smoking cigars? Well, when I was starting out, I would read the range of reviews out there and one type would always cause me to wonder whether I was getting everything I could out of a cigar. I'd read them and begin to doubt my own experiences. Anxiety about grabbing every flavor reference I could find would sometimes interfere with the enjoyment...and as we all know, that's just wrong. I call these "esoteric" reviews. They are typically written in flowery prose and include copious amounts of highly specific and uncommon descriptors.

But, if we understand that 1) people naturally have varying levels of tasting ability, 2) we each can perceive and associate scents differently and 3) linking flavor notes to scent memories is a skill that can be improved with practice, then we can see these reviews and our own capabilities in a whole new light. We can be comfortable enjoying our individual experience of smoking the cigar. But what makes scent memories so powerful and individual?

For one, olfactory memories reside in one of the most "primitive" or primal areas of the human brain. And it is the fact that early experiences during the formative periods of childhood allow us to encode memories deeply in sense memory that makes these recollections as fresh at 66 years of age as they were at 6 years. Think about it; scents of home, memories of family, the pains and joys of figuring out the world are some of the things that make us who we are. In fact, any repeated or significant pairing between sensory stimuli and memory function can set up these lifelong triggers. Second, keep in mind that while the same scent molecule may trigger the same cascade of events in the olfactory apparatus, once these signals get into the brain, our decoding and interpretation of these might lead to quite different "flavours." In other words, my cinnamon toast might be your graham cracker.

Finally, the context (setting, beverage, company, and frame of mind) has soooo much to do with the experience. It would not be too much of a stretch to suggest that a review devoid of sufficient context is, to a degree, unintelligible. Reading about the surrounding environment certainly does help "paint the picture." In a word, context is king. That's why I think it's important to record the context of the smoke as well. The accompanying beverage and food have especially powerful influence on what we perceive from smoking. The best example of this is eating something sweet, then following it with something that is sweeter still or something that is sour. Returning to that first item, it will seem either less sweet or far more sweet than what we might remember.

Just for curiosity's sake, I carried out a quick word analysis of a recent cigar review written by an established member of an online forum. I extracted the descriptor words (descriptive nouns, adjectives and adverbs) and counted them and compared that count to the total word count. In the case of this review, selected at random, fully 52% of all the words were descriptors. Now I want to make clear that I did not single out this person's work to subject it to ridicule. It is simply his style and way of describing his experience. I want to show an extreme example of the esoteric style to see if there's anything we can learn and use in our own accounts.

Wilkey

Total Descriptors, approximate: 202

Color (24)

Colorado Claro

deep cocoa

Van Dyke brown

burnt sienna cast

straw gold highlighting, around veins

single dark olive water mark, at mid-ship

ochre-tinged sienna

natural walnut

khaki

cocoa

Van Dyke brown

rich umber, imbued with...

pronounced sanguine tone

Physical Characteristics (22)

relatively silky outer leaf

minimal veining

quite similar

very fine tooth

very mild box press

relatively compact roll density, translated to...

medium medium-firm finger feel

good superficial resilience

nicely rendered taper, diminished to...

well-crafted point

exemplary build

Ash & Burn (20)

slightly flaky, chasmal, light to naval grey exterior of ash

more solid dark charcoal interior

cautiously disengaged the ash

variously rounded, blunted, conical, filigree embering tip

burn edge tended to unevenness

pre-light draw

Aroma and On the Palate (118)

archetypal primary VVV fragrance of...

sweet clay earth

cocoa, lightly dusted by

hint of peanuts, embellished by

saddle leather

toffee

faint cedar

cedar, much more forthright

woodiness, bound to

smooth core Cuban leaf

peripheral sensations of...

bitter greens

bell peppers

lime zest

jalapeño, demure hit of

cigar lounge

ripe tobacco

antique furniture and leather upholstery, scents of

sumptuous

discreet sweetness. leaned to

smoke-dried apricots and cherries, evocative of

roasted cocktail nuts

rounded, medium bodied, sagely toasted tobacco

barn hay

calcareous soil striated with rock salt

cedar

white pepper

roasted peanuts and Arabica coffee, subtle overlay of

dried herbs, softly conveyed

zesty vegetal and cedar notes, echoed

simultaneously light and mouth-filling effect

earth-infused tobacco, to the fore

sweet meat quality

surprising

very round

amiable

somewhat remiscent

peak

nuts and coffee, slowly melded into the mix

textural quality, further smoothed by...

veneer of leather

homogeneous whole, amalgamated into

core tastes, never corroded by...

herbal, peppery spices

floral nuances, peeked through

bitterness

Medium to medium-full bodied at the close

Less piquant perkiness and spark

young

superior integration of...

wide-ranging constituent taste aspects

General (18)

quite similar

overall appearance

recent production

higher standard

regular production vitola

superb

summer afternoon cigar

early stage

ideal

Eminently satisfying

well-blended characteristics...

emerged and fused

barely 5 month old

carefully matured tobaccos

[Tampa1257]

Very informative post Wilkey! Thanks for sharing. Once I digest it all, I'll comment more.

[genevapics]

First, you have had way too much time on your hands this weekend. Second, and probably more importantly, this post and the one titled "Bolivar Deathmatch" are what I would call strong posts! Wonderful reads. Thank you for reaffirming why I believe Friends of Habanos is the best site for cuban cigars on the web. Again, excellent work on your part.

[El Presidente]

» I was so inspired by Ken's post about flavours in cigars that I reassembled

» some things I had written for another cigar bulletin board. Here's my take

» on the situation from an amateur's perspective.

»

» *********************************

I am in awe

No-one previously has ever written "inspired" and "Ken" in the same post.

Off to the Review section again!

[The Privateer]

Wow....what a read! Thanks for all the information, very helpful indeed.

[raney]

Wow...

Wilkey's on a roll. Very interesting reading - I need to spend a bit of time with this, and Ken's post over the coming week or two.

Thanks for having too much time on your hands! :-D

[Ginseng]

» » I was so inspired by Ken's post about flavours in cigars that I

» reassembled

» » some things I had written for another cigar bulletin board. Here's my

» take

» » on the situation from an amateur's perspective.

» »

» » *********************************

»

» I am in awe

»

» No-one previously has ever written "inspired" and "Ken" in

» the same post.

»

» Off to the Review section again!

Well, it was running long so I had to cut the pre-commentary down a bit so it might have lost the original feeling. What I first wrote before the edit was more like this:

I was so inspired by Ken's still being alive and sufficiently coherent after a lifetime of debauchery to write such a long post about cigars...

:-P

Wilkey

[Ginseng]

» First, you have had way too much time on your hands this weekend.

Well,

My semester starts today and research begins as well, so posts of this magnitude will be fewer and farther between. However, I'll still be thinking and writing :-)

Wilkey