I was and still am kind of like watching a monkey hump a football. I'm all over the place. Mostly, I knew what I remembered pipe tobacco being like from the first time I started, but then all I smoked was Captain Black Gold. Not a bad tobacco, but I had absolutely no clue what was out there.
This time around, I started checking out this site and that site. I'd search by the most popular tobaccos and go from there. I also discovered that some things were disappearing and I wanted to at least try some things that were going away, so I bought some things McClelland's produced, then it was the Dunhill blends, in addition to other things that aren't going away, just scarce, so I'd then buy that when it hit.
So yeah, just kind of all over the place, trying to find out what I liked, what I didn't, and what I would sell my kidney for. It can be rough with so many choices out there, but that's also a good thing. When one drops off, another steps up to the plate.