I agree that the reviewer is often more vital than the review, finding a similar palate match to your own. I'm still working my way thru Lat blends and I've found SteelCowboy on TR to converge with my preferences, so it's of value for me to get a good gauge on some unknown tobo.
Sometimes the most short and concise reviews are the most helpful ones when trying to get a handle on something good to try.
Sometimes I purposely avoid reviews of a tobo I'm going to smoke for the first time, and then read the reviews after the fact.
After reading the flavor-wheel thread, it got me to thinking I need to make use of it, to get a shorthand profile of primary and secondary traits, then expand from that base with the more ineffable nuances. I'm not a particularly good reviewer, but it's something I want to try and work on.
Sometimes I enjoy reading the long evocative reviews because often certain moods are captured and conveyed which highlight the more mysterious aspects of tobacco, the psychological realm of subjective interpretation can be an interesting thing, and such Proustian prose can help appreciate the more subtle depths...
No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. ... Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? ... And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea.
But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.
-Marcel Proust
http://www.haverford.edu/psych/ddavis/p109g/proust.html
A tobacco like St. Bruno is difficult to accurately review because of the compounded nature of its complex essence. The old recipe is online and one finds the essence contains stuff like Musk Ketone, Courmarin, and Cassia Oil, amongst other things - but knowing the technical info hasn't really added to my enjoyment or even really unwrapped the mystery, trying to discover the secret I found myself reading perfume blogs LOL and learning about aldehydes and an olfactive group known as Chypre (this sharp scent is based on harmony of oak moss, labdanum, patchouli and bergamot). Musk Ambrette or Musk Mallow? I'm still in the dark!
The old professor gives a good review of it:
http://pipes.priss.org/misc.php#saint_bruno
Pruss,
since you're well familiar with sensorial education, could you recco a "palate builder kit" of spices, herbs and fruits or whatever that would help expand my vocabulary with these things? I'm not really a foodie and don't have a wide range of taste references, I'd love to develop my flavor detection skills, would a "palate builder kit" be effective or possible to do this?
