Whisky Flavour Map - How about Tobacco?

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Slow Puffs

Slow Puffs

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Here is Diageo's Whisky Flavour Map for Scotch Single Malts:

http://www.fineexpressions.co.uk/news/2007-Nov/single_malt_flavour_map1.html

How about one for tobacco?

As some of you know, I have added whisky "adventure" as a past time. As a newbie to whisky, I feel very much like when I first started tobaccos. I have read plenty, including numerous reviews...

Practical "tools" for education and understanding are always helpful. This map is very helpful to me in the area of Scotch Single Malts.

How about a plotting map applied for pipe tobacco?

Example... you try a latakia blend and unwittingly, it's the strongest latakia blend out there and you never come back to try latakia again. With a "flavour map", one might be eased into the experience.
 
it'd probably take a lot of data since it will be pretty subjective but if you get enough data from people with discerning palates you could get something like that. Obviously you can't go by any tom, dick and harry like Tobacco Reviews so you don't have the guys who just write. "Taste like crap, never smoking this again."
 
The difficult thing with tobacco is that different blend families have different base characteristics which could make a universal chart impossible.
 
Thanks for the post. I just acquired some Lagavulin 16. Rich and smoky, here I come!
I think Zero makes a good point about the source of data for such a chart.
 
Perhaps you can't have a chart based on blend/flavor, but it would still be interesting seeing where the different tobaccos come from.
 
Yeah, it's going to be really hard to make a graph like that because you have more that 2 characteristics so unless you can figure out how to graph a 5 characteristic point it's going to be problematic. Because I starting to thinking sweet, spicy, earthy, smoky and strength but they aren't exclusive you can have something that's super sweet and spicy at the same time.

Maybe something standardized like MacBaren uses on their site but with a much large scale like 1-20 or larger so if something is ridiculously sickly sweet it would be at the high end. MB's 5 point scale isn't really useful since a sweet virginia gets a five but so does a cased to hell aro that's super sweet.

Then you could have a flavor profile of:
Sweet
Smokey
Earthy
Spicy
Strength

Aros add:
Flavoring strength

And optional data like:
Room Note
In Bag Aroma

Then some way to display along a line where the blend falls for each attribute compared to others.
 
Lagavulin 16 - I just received this for Father's Day :D , but haven't opened it, yet.


This Map is specifically for Scotch single malt whisky. As with tobacco, there is a variety of whiskies.

Scotch -blended
Irish
Bourbon
Canadian
etc

So if one were attempting a tobacco map, it might be necessary to think about quadrants for just one tobacco type. If you look at whisy reviews, there are so many dresciptive words for "nose" and "taste", especially for single malts.




 
Cigars are marketed much more thoroughly than pipe tobacco. Because of this, I find myself relying on recommendations from my local tobacconist as well as the few pipe smokers hanging out in the smoking room.

Some pipe smokers have the unfortunate problem of living in an area without a real tobacconist to advise them, and as such they make most of their purchases for quality tobacco online or mail order magazines. I would imagine this type of chart, while subjective, would still prove very valuable to a lot of folks.
 
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