Taste
Individuals are attracted to different taste sensations, and the taste of the cigar is no exception. While we all have our personal preferences, anyone can distinguish a bad cigar from an excellent one.
Tobacco experts and experienced smokers practice some basic steps in connoisseurship that are worth every cigar lover’s effort to master.
To form an overall impression of a cigar involves using all of your senses, sight, touch, smell, taste and even your hearing. The first thing that you should do when you remove a cigar from a box or from your humidor is to inspect it. The appearance and feel of the cigar wrapper tell a story and several lessons about taste can be learned from the outside of any cigar. Listen to it; roll the cigar between your fingers in order to determine the moisture content of the wrapper and the filler. It should be firm, but should give a little when squeezed, there should not be any rustling or cracking of the leaves. A wrapper does not make or break a cigar, however it plays an important role because it provides texture and beauty, and is your first contact with the personality and character of a cigar.
Cuban wrappers are silky and smooth, these wrappers have elasticity and strength often found lacking in wrapper leaves from other countries. Seeing oil in any wrapper leaf indicates that the cigar has been well-humidified at 70-72 % humidity and that the smoke should be relatively cool. A cool smoke is a tastier one, because it means the tobacco isn’t carbonizing or overheating, which can limit flavors.
If you see cracks or ripples in the surface of the wrapper leaf, you know that the cigar was exposed to cycles of over humidification and excessive dryness. If the cigar is forced through rapid cycles of expansion and contraction, the internal construction is destroyed. A cigar with internal damage will smoke unevenly or “plug”, drawing unevenly. This may still occur due to faulty construction, but your chances are better with a perfect wrapper than a broken one.
After lighting your cigar, look at the ash. According to most cigar experts, white ash is better than a gray one. The color of cigar ash has been a hot topic of many authorities on cigars.
A white ash means near complete combustion. A white ash means the cigar burns better. This might be the result of the breaking down of complex molecules, by the fermentation process, or the breaking down of tannin long chained polymers with age.
A whiter ash offers a plausible explanation as to why cigars get stronger in taste in the first few years. Substances too complicated to burn remain in the ash as black particles. With time, these substances become combustible and the cigar becomes stronger. This happens commonly with cigars which have a bitter or harsh green taste when new. Please note that a white ash may be skin deep. The wrapper ash is white, but what’s inside is still grey. Look vertically at the foot of the cigar and you will see clearly.
The ash of a cigar nearly always begins to turn white by 5 to 6 years of age. By 30 years old the ash of most cigars has become snow white. It is interesting that some young cigars have a white ash. A young cigar with a white ash nearly always tastes smooth.
The meaning of a white ash is a better complete combustion. It is no way related to the long term aging process, in which complex mysterious chemical reactions take place and are practically not understood.
A cigar in a box in which others have a white ash, but which has a grey ash in particular could mean two things, the humidity of that particular cigar when smoked may not be optimal, either too dry or too moist, which hinders proper combustions. Another reason is that the smoking technique may not be the best. Drawing too quickly or too frequently also results in undesirable combustion of the tobacco.
The final visual cue is the burn rate. You can taste a cigar that is burning improperly because an uneven burn distorts the flavor of the blend. Simply put, a cigar is designed to burn different tobaccos evenly throughout the length of the smoke. A cigar may start off mild and grown stronger or change in some other ways.
The sense of taste is located mainly on the tongue and to a lesser degree on the roof of the mouth. There exists four basic tastes; sweet, sour, salty and bitter. Everything else is either a combination of these four or a combination of taste and aroma. Although food descriptors are now being used, we stick with words like acidic, salty, bitter, sweet, bite, sour, smooth, rich, full -bodied and balanced.
Aroma is important as well, and most cigar makers not only taste for flavors, but smell for aroma at the same time.
It takes many different types of tobacco to come up with a blend of taste that works as well as achieving a consistent taste, one that stays the same, year after year. No two leaves of tobacco are the same, and no two cigars can be the same year after year. To compensate for nature, cigar makers utilize different types of tobaccos. They continually seek a blend that will achieve consistency and at the same time create some flavor complexity. A good blend uses tobaccos from different geographic zones, varietals, grades and harvests so that the cigar will be complete and balanced. Achieving this balance is difficult. There are an infinite number of variables that can alter the taste of any blend; soil, varietal, climate, harvesting, curing, fermentation, manufacturing process, and the humidity.
Two very important factors relating to taste are aging and construction. Aging provides a smoothness, richness and roundness. Even with the finest blend in the world, a poorly constructed cigar will be less enjoyable than a perfectly made cigar of only modest blend. A loose draw (a cigar that burns fast, letting a lot of smoke pass through quickly because it is under filled) will increase smoking temperature, destroying taste. A tight draw, on the other hand, reduces the sensitivity of the taste buds, drawing less smoke means having less to taste. Moreover a tight draw may extinguish more frequently and relighting makes a cigar harsh.
The variability of cigars may be one of the most essential things a consumer should remember. Cigars are handmade products, produced by skilled artisan in quantities of anywhere from 1000 to 300 a day depending on the size of the cigar. Like any hand-made item, cigars are subject to human error. A bit too much tobacco here, a bit too little there, or a fatigued hand applying the wrong amount of pressure can completely alter the final product. All manufacturers inadvertently let the occasional faulty cigar slip through their quality control and reach the market place. What should a consumer do? Accept the reality, throw out the cigar and light up a new one. It’s extremely unlikely that the next one will be flawed unless you are smoking a second rate brand.
Once you are smoking your favorite cigar, you won’t even have to think of the about the complex set of processes that brought the cigar to your hand. It will most likely taste as great as the last one, and you’ll already be looking forward to the next one.