mark":af2hifao said:
my taste buds must be dead cause I've never found most of what the reviewers find in a blend. Hints of leather, sweet & salty, oak, dark chocolate, oatmeal and citrus all evade me, but that's just me.
That's pretty much where I am; chocolate I can pick up in some burley blends, campfire (not barbecue) in latakia blends, etc. It's all I can do to pick up "sweet" in a Virginia blend. Very pedestrian taste buds, I would say. I just like tobacco. Tobacco tastes like tobacco to me. And pipe tobacco is one thing; cigars are even worse. I have no idea what cigar descriptors mean--or, put another way, they mean nothing to me.
But some people have superior powers of scent, taste, and apparently a vivid vocabulary to express what they're tasting. A woman I know does very well at wine tastings, and she's not a "pro." I thought she was putting on airs or b.s.-ing until I saw her performance at blind tastings, where she stunned various people in the trade by her astuteness. I now hang on her every word when judging likker. Wish she smoked tobaccoweed, for her insights.