Notes on Tobacco and Flavours Tasting.

[carver]

Hello,
It's when I think I know a little more about tobacco and pipe smoking that I realise I know nothing.

Tastes like berries and cherry and very easy to spot, but for most of the rest I found myself at a loss when I want to comment, even for my own future references, on the blends I smoke.
I've tried to push myself to keep notes on the blends I taste.

So far, I feel like I can't say a lot about much of the blends I try, I feel like I lack the knowledge and references to talk about those bowls with the right words.

I am not trying to be pedantic in the search of the right jargon, just that I don't know what to say about those.

How can I learn to identify subtleties, how can learn to gauge and taste different types of tobaccos.

I still can't tell if a tobacco has burley or virginia. I have no idea what does adding black cavendish to a blend do to it.

What is "the sweetness of virginias"...
All those notions elude me. But I do want to learn more about it.

 

[cobguy]

Take your time and just enjoy ... the rest falls into place eventually.
One thing you can do is order some blending tobacco and try each one straight. That will give you a good idea what to look for when you are tasting a blend.
Good luck and enjoy the ride! ::

 

[perdurabo]

Can you taste nuances in Wine, Beer, or Whiskey? If you do, that's good.
Dark Kentucky=cedar. That's one relation that I find that really sticks out, for me. Perique= dark Spice=mushrooms=stewed fruit. Perique By itself, dark burley with ripe Raisiny Chocolate.
Certain orientals give tones of olives and kitchen spices. Virginia is baked goods, citrusy, and sometimes malty.
I do not keep a diary of blends and their tasting notes. I get these flavors but not in any order and most of the time it's in passing, after I've coaxed them from the embers. I'll be like, "Damn! That tasted like fresh baked bread with a slight bit of nuts with molasses and spiced something or other." You are constantly chasing these favors. Answer the question I posed to you. Then you may began to relax a bit, sip, and observe in passing,

 

[hawky454]

I would go out and buy different varietals and smoke them individually until you get a good idea of what each leaf tastes like on it's own. Most B&M's will have these available for purchase.
Edit - Just noticed that Cobguy just said the same exact thing. Good job Cobguy, bad job on my part for not reading the responses before I posted.

 

[frozenchurchwarden]

Looking at the "Disappointing Blends" thread it seems that your biggest contrast within the Virginia genre is between Dunhill Flake and Full Virginia Flake. I haven't had Elizabethan from Dunhill but the Sutliff Elizabethan Match blend was quite flavourful so I would expect the two to be similar.
Are you doing anything different with Dunhill Flake?
Could it be that you're smoking them too dry? Or too hot?

Virginia turns starchy if it has no moisture and/or if it's burning too fast. Maybe try loading a sopping wet fresh flake of FVF (but aged at least a year) and try that at various poinst throughout the day to catch it at different moisture levels.

I just found out last week that the reason people use tall, narrow bowls for Virginia blends is more for the sake of the burning rate than flavour, except if the narrow bowl allows you to smoke it with more moisture then it would probably taste better. It's probably best use a bowl that's 3/4" wide at maximum.
Have you tried Samuel Gawith St. James Flake?

I hate to say "just keep trying stuff", but it took four samples of McClelland Virginia (a total of six samples of Red VA in general) before I got one with any of the characteristic "tangy" flavour. Even if you've had aged FVF out of a tin, maybe the tin wasn't the best place for aging. Jar it and come back in a year.

Smoke what you enjoy now and just let the other blends sit until you and/or the tobacco change enough to agree with each other.
For a description of the flavour itself, I like to say that the flavour in a good Virginia blend is about as strong as a cup of water with a few sugar cubes. It's a subtle flavour to begin with, and as much as anything I appreciate the mildly creamy aftertaste that lasts for a few hours past the bowl.

 

[shutterbugg]

It's what I call the King's New Clothes effect. Self-appointed connossieurs of pipe tobacco make the claim (which nobody can actually prove or disprove) that they can taste a laundry list of nuances having nothing whatsoever to do with what's actually in the blend, and followers don't want to appear less discriminating, so they're like "oh, yeah, sure, I taste all that in it too!" Then newbies come along and all they taste is plain ol' tobacco and feel all inadequate and stuff. The way I see it, if you like the taste of what you're smoking, smoke it. If not, then smoke something else. The hell with what some other person says you're supposed to taste or not taste.

 

[rigmedic1]

Try different pipes too. I have pipes set aside for different types of tobaccos, because in those pipes the flavors stand out more. I have discovered through trial and error that even new pipes, no matter what you use to break them in, gravitate towards different blends. I bought a Ligne Bretagne, and only smoked VaPers in it, but they never gave the smoke characteristics I enjoyed in my dedicated Virginia pipes. But the thing was stellar with Latakia blends, so it became one of my Latakia pipes. My Savinelli Bing's Favorite, which I tried aromatics in, was horrible. I switched to VaPers and Virginias in it, and get remarkable tastes and richness. Even then, some VaPers are not good in it, but wonderful in other pipes.

 

[texmexpipe]

Flavore is so subjective, and you taste what you taste. It changes from pipe to pipe and sometimes from the top of a tin/pouch to the bottom. I've found sometimes that it is even dependent on what I've eaten or the beverage in hand. I say go for it all, enjoy the journey, write down the experience and take each bowl at its own. At least that's my somewhat hedonist take on it.

 

[markus]

What shutterbug said.
Find something that you enjoy, smoke it slowly and keep some water nearby.

I am in the same boat as you, I have learned to enjoy smoking my pipes, but I'm trying to slow down and learn to "taste" what I'm smoking now, in order to deepen my experience... I'm getting there.

The struggle is real!

 

[pipedreamin]

I feel your pain carver, I'm a bit of a clod it the smoke subtlety department. Reading something like Fred Hanna's book didn't help matters either, just made me feel inadequate :D (no, really, it didn't) but the man can pick out things I'd never be able to. I think I've fried a sector of my taste buds with too much hot pepper/spice over the years.
An interesting point Hanna made, which was similar to shutterbug's post above, was about a wine tasting, blindfolded so as not to see the label. The "snobs" made all manner of fancy claims about a lowly house wine, expecting it was the

schnazzy one, they were a bit red faced in the end.
My attempt at tasting subtleties has been to forgo reading the reviews and just give it a whirl to see what I can find without expectation.
Oh, and I like the Bulwer-Lytton quote, I've read some of his stuff but wasn't aware he may be a pipe smoker.

 

[deathmetal]

One thing you can do is order some blending tobacco and try each one straight.

I highly recommend doing this. Get some perspective. And then find a TR reviewer you trust, and compare your smokin' notes to theirs.

 

[prairiedruid]

Everyone's palate is different hence the wide disparity of reviews for some blends on tobaccoreviews.com. I'm just a year into pipe smoking and my palate continues to get better at picking up flavors the more I smoke. If there is another tobacco crawl month I highly suggest you join in; I learned quite a bit from the Standard Tobacco one and the Pease crawl was epic. As was mentioned different pipes make different blends sing so keep experimenting; I also find having something to drink with my pipe smoking can enhance the experience for my palate.

 

[cortezattic]

Link to a somewhat related thread from a couple of weeks ago.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Isn't it amazing that one single plant can taste so different depending on where it was cultivated and what elements it was exposed to. In less than 100 years tobacco spread throughout Africa, Asia, and Europe into many different varieties. What a wonderful plant we all enjoy.

 

[carver]

It's not really that I don't taste anything, but I find it difficult to put a name on the things I taste because I don't recognise those flavours.

I hear people say, "hmm Bs BS BS taste of plum BS BS BS " ... I tried the blend. Then I couldn't believe my taste buds, so I went to the store, bought plums, fresh and dried, just to make sure. then tasted the blend again.

Then I wondered "do plums taste differently in different parts of the world and in mine?"
@prairiedruid: what is a tobacco crawl ?
I think the idea of sampling blending tobaccos can be a very good idea. However, here in China, I am not sure I can acquire those easily.

 

[bigpond]

I'm short on time but I just wanted to say that identifying and describing what we taste is like learning a language, we tend to use a few words to cover a large range of meanings until we have the words to articulate our ideas fully.
I studied winemaking in university. When we began learning about how to identify flavors and aromas we would smell jars filled with various ingredients (like coffee, juices, herbs, wood chips, leather, vanilla beans, etc) while we tasted to help to isolate elements. This also helped us to build a framework of reference.
I think a flavor wheel for pipe tobacco would be very helpful as a framework. I haven't found one that is specifically pipe appropriate but the following links may be helpful to you.
The first is for cigars

https://bcpassets.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/cigar-flavors-wheel-large.png
The second is for chenin blanc

http://www.suedafrika-wein.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Chenin_Blanc_Tasting_Wheel-.jpg
I think the chenin blanc link is particularly relevant because I find a lot of fruit in pipe tobacco.
I hope this is helpful to you and enjoy the road

 

[carver]

Hey bigpond, that post of yours is very useful indeed. I just had a look at the tasting wheels, they seem to be really connected. Especially to help me put words on things.

I am going to print that up and place it big on the wall of my man-cave.

From there, what would you recommend in order to connect a flavour that I taste with the actual taste ... ?

 

[carver]

This thread was also very informative.

Factual Tobacco Descriptions

 

[carver]

By the way, does anyone know a shop that would make sampling packs of all blending tobaccos ? Like a "Blend-it-yourself" kit ?